Your Destiny is Annulled - II: Wild Wasteland
by Cheb
Summary: Saotome Ranma, Tendou Akane, Mizuno Ami, Tsukino Usagi. Accidental copies of themselves with no reason to return home, they were promised a world where they could have a fresh start... Welcome to the Wasteland, meet Chosen One.
1. Meet your new homeworld

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Kunihiku Ikuhara, Naoko Takeuchi and the creative teams of Interplay, Obsidian and Bethesda.

(シーンブレイク)

 **Annulled Destiny II:  
Wild Wasteland**

(シーンブレイク)

WARNINGS:  
1\. My self-taught English still sucketh.  
2\. By reading further you agree to suffer from my unimaginably slow writing speed.

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Reading the prequel isn't strictly necessary. This story is designed so that it could be read stand-alone.

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A dry, deadly hot desert. The rocky plain is covered with scarce small bushes, their brownish branches almost devoid of foliage. Mountains could be seen rising over the horizon in every direction, bluish in the distance. There's a deep silence, not even insects could be heard.

Suddenly, a column of brilliant light flashes to life amidst this vast emptines, striking from the sky like silent lightnig. It is shortening quickly, growing thicker. Soon it begins falling apart to separate lumps. If there was someone to observe this phenomena, he'd see the light melting, flowing into four female figures surrounded by a big glowing bubble each. They float half a dozen meters above ground.

A couple seconds later the figures begin to dim from brilliant to golden yellow like a setting sun, descending faster and faster as gravity takes hold on them. As soon as the first bubble touches the ground, it bursts with a flash blowing sand and rocks aside. Not obscured by the glow any more, a limp body lands in the resulting crater with a dull thud.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Then there is silence again. Four nude girls lie sprawled in four craters, their hair spread around, their limbs bent awkwardly. There are two short-haired brunettes, one redhead with long, wavy hair and one blonde with hair of unbelievable length, literally reaching her feet. Spread around, it covers her and the ground around her like a transparent starburst.

The sun is scorching them indifferently, making a heat stroke a very real risk.

A few minutes later, one brunette begins to stir. Then she sits up awkwardly, squinting against the bright light. "Ow, it's hot," she mumbles in Japanese. "Guys, are you all right...? Guys...? Ranma?" She begins looking around in panic until she notices her three coimrades. She lets out a breath of relief: "I'm so glad. I was afraid we were scattered again!" Awkwardly standing up she hobbles to shake the others awake. The ground on the crater bottoms is not as hot as it is around, but the air is still that of an oven and the sun is mercilessly scorching. Not a good place to be lying around unconscious.

 **Chapter 1,**  
 **Meet your new homeworld**

(シーンブレイク)

 _War. War never changes._ ·

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"Ow!" Ami hastily sat up, jolted awake by the feeling of hot sunlight. It didn't help much, her shoulders were still being scorched. "Akane-chan, is that you?" She took a look around, but her sight was still blurry, spots swimming in her eyes from the too bright light. "We have to get into a shade, me and Usagi can't stand such heat!"

"There is nothing around that provides one," Akane replied grumpily as she was gathering Usagi's hair picking it from the ground so she could at least approach the girl without stepping on it. She bunched it up. "Hey, Usagi-chan!" She shook Usagi's shoulder. "U-sa-ni!"

"Mgmphinute more, Mamo-chan..." the blonde mumbled.

Akane sighed as she continued gathering her hair from the ground. "However long you dream, the harsh reality won't go away, Usagi-chan. Come on. Or are you going to whine about your sunburned back later?"

"Ohhhh," the blonde drawled with disappointment as she flowed into a kneeling position. "The dream was so sweet. Mamo-chan was there." She took a look around. "While the reality is truly harsh and merciless..." She stood up, then jerked her head as the sand-powdered bunch of her hair caught on her sweaty back.

"Are you all right, Usag-chan?" Ami asked worriedly.

The blonde surveyed the surrounding landscape. "I am. Bodily, at least. If you disregard the unattainable dream of simply laying down and dying, then I am all right. We landed in a perfect place. This landscape is fitting and symbolic."

"We have to find shelter," Ami urged. "We won't survive here for long."

"I agree," Akane said as she scrutinized the horizon. "I won't either. With sun this harsh, even ki-reinforcement won't help me against sunburn... Drats, there's not a single tree up to the very horizon! Let's wake Ranma and make him dig us a burrow."

True to her words, she dragged the redhead out of her crater and started shaking her vigorously.

"Huh?" Ranma mumbled, coming to her senses. "Ak... Akane? Are you all right?" Her face lit up with a silly, adoring smile.

"I am, but why weren't you waking up? Are _you_ ·all right?"

"I wouldn't say that," the redhead replied, trying to stand on her own. "It feels like something in my soul... Wait." She began squeezing her breasts with rising alarm. "Tits?！ Oh craaaap!" She clutched her head with both hands.

"What crap?" Akane asked, taken aback. "What are you talking about?"

"I sympathize, Ranma-kun," Ami said. "But... That was likely inevitable. The transfer process required the powers of Sailor Sol from start to finish."

"What are you talking about?" Akane grew worried. "What was inevitable?"

"These bodies," Ranma pointed at herself, "aren't the ones we were born in. They were created here, in place, based on our souls. Shit! I was hoping to get a mold of my original, male side!"

"So what?" Akane asked, not comprehending. "There's no limit to our magic anymore. We find a place to heat water—"

"If," Ranma interrupted her. "If the curse even survived the transfer. Now this body is my original one! At best, I'd be transforming from a girl into a girl with cold water, and back into a girl with hot! Oh, craaaap!"

Akane gasped.

"Then we have to find Jusenkyou," Ami said trying to console her, "and dip you in a proper spring so that you transform into a guy with cold water."

"That's if it even exists in this world," the redhead replied, her mood sour. Then she perked up. "No matter, we'll make it. We'll find something. Even if I have to become a futanari!"

"Brrr!" Akane shivered.

"By the way, where did we land?" the redhead asked. "It's scorching good. Mebbe Africa? Come on, transform. I can survive this, only becoming dark, but you would be burned seriously!" Sweeping one last lovingly-predatory look over her wife, she turned around to allow others some privacy as she started surveying the horizon.

"I'm afraid," Ami replied, rubbing at her shoulders, "our henshin wands aren't with us anymore."

"So transform without them!" the redhead urged matter-of-factly. "I remember it was you who said they were training tools."

"Easier said than done," Ami replied with uncertainty. "All right, I'll try."

"I wouldn't be able to, I'm sure," Usagi declared, despondent. "My poweres have... always depended on my mood too much."

"Just imagine," Ranma told her with a sadistic grin, "your skin peeling off."

"Eek!"

"Rrrranma!"

The redhead dodged. "Your back is swelling, all red, inflamed..."

"Moon-eternal-makeup...! Waah, it doesn't work!"

"It's so sensitive that even the touch of you own hair causes you unbearable pain..."

"Ranma! Stop that at once!"

The redhead dodged. Akane zipped by, losing her balance. A moment later her punch crushed rocks raising a column of dust.

"Moon crystal power, make-up...! Nooo, not this too!"

"Forget the touch! Even a slightest breeze, even trying to move put you in horrible agony!"

"Rrrr!"

"There are dozens of kilometers on foot between you and the nearest hospital! But we can't even carry you: your entire body is one solid lump of pain!"

"Ranma, you sadist, I'll beat you into a pulp!"

"Please, please, let it work! Moon prizm power, make-up...! Make-up, I say...! Nooo! I don't want to die from horrible pain!"

Enraged, Akane laid unto the redhead in a whirlwind of blows. But her movements were laughably predictable. Ranma was flowing away from her strikes with ease, continuing to torture the blonde with a smirk: "Pain! Pain is torturing you like claws raking your flesh, never stopping. There is no escape! Walking is agony. Sitting still is agony. And then, a day or two later—"

"You asked for it! I'll never forgive—"

"Moonprizmpowermakeup‼！" Usagi shrieked hysterically through tears of terror. Light flashed in her raised, empty hand.

"Hiryu shoten ha." Misty streamers whirled around Ranma's raised finger.

"Why you, paras—" Akane was sucked up by a small tornado. Whipping her about half-heartedly, it soon spat her out. She tumbled across the rocky ground raising clouds of dust.

"It worked." Sailor Moon let out a breath of relief as she tugged at her first, basic suit she haven't summoned for the last two years. Then she added with respectful approval: "Your motivational skill is really something. Masterfully done!"

"What?" Akane was taken aback. She was covered in scrapes and scratches after demolishing a particularly sturdy bush with her body.

"Always please!" Ranma grinned. "You two, do it. It's awkward for me, you know."

"Mercury crystal power, Make-up!" Ami transformed into Super Sailor Mercury. "Hmm, it was easier than I expected."

"Iris prism power, Make-up!" Akane echoed. Nothing happened. "Iris prism power, make-up! Why doesn't it—"

"Relax," Mercury advised. "Make yourself believe you are holding the wand."

After seven tries, Akane managed to transform into Sailor Iris. Her scrapes vanished. "What about you?" she asked Ranma who just kept standing there in her birthday suit.

"I, well, I'ts not that..." the other girl tried to object unconvincingly.

"You've overstrained yourself, haven't you?" Mercury asked calling up her visor with a thought. The transparent face-mask emerged in front of her face, its HUD filling with symbols and graphs. "Just as I thought. Thank you, Ranma," she said with deep feeling. "You sacrificed a lot for our sake."

"Wait!" Iris exclaimed. "Are you telling us he can't transform?"

"Not much of a loss," Ranma tried to wave her concern aside with strained indifference. "For the lives of my wife and friends, that's a small price to pay!" She then added with concealed hope: "Ami? How bad is it? It's bad, isn't it? I can't even feel the Sun."

"Alas," Mercury replied. "Your sailor crystal... burned out, for the lack of a better word. Without my computer I can't say how long the recovery would take. I assume, months or even years."

"Or never," Ranma summed it up with a sigh. "Never mind. I only miss the ability to fly, that was really cool. I was waiting eagerly to fly in the sky over land, not just in empty space..."

"Ranma..." Iris walked up to her and hugged her.

"I don't remember much," the redhead admitted, "but in the end the energy was running out. I remember deciding that I would pull you all through even if I burn myself out. Well... I am alive, and that's good enough! Hey, Ami—"

"Mercury," Iris corrected her.

"Let's call each other by our real names," Sailor Moon suggested. "The secret identities were for protecting our loved ones who couldn't defend themselves. There are none now." She felt around her hair still hanging, undone, down to her feet. "Ranma, do you have some technique to lop this off? I'm afraid it would be some time until we get our hands on scissors."

"What?" Ami and Akane chorused in horror.

"Lop this off," Usagi repeated, wrapping her hair around her arm and raising it overhead. "It's a part of my old life that must stay behind."

Ami and Akane were standing there, mouths agape, unable to believe what they heard.

"It's too risky," Ranma replied. This gesture only made her feel respect for the girl. "I do have a vacuum blade, but I haven't practiced it in a long time. We'd have to cut dangerously close to the body."

Akane let out a breath of relief.

"All right," replied Usagi. "I'll try by myself, then. As far as I remember, the transformation answers to my will and..." She concentrated with a funny grimace, her forehead scrunched up. "Aha! Moon crystal power, Make-up!"

There was a brief flash of transformation, then her hair ebbed like a wave, falling down and pooling at Usagi's feet. Akane gasped.

"Kind of like that," Usagi said as she smoothed her forward-tilted mohawk and slid her palms along the prickly stubble of shaved hair at the sides of her head. "Is this gothic enough?"

Her seifuku turned almost entirely black. The bows and the skirt piping were dark grey, as well as the rings hugging her shoulders and elbows. Her tiara was glinting a dark filigree of blue-finished steel. There were deliberately overdone shadows around her eyes, her lips glossy black. Instead of the usual crescents, there were black upturned crosses dangling from her ears. The black brooch was bearing a picture of a broken heart. Of the four small gems signifying her connection to the Inners, there were three empty depressions and a lone sapphire, the only spark of color in the outfit.

(To see images read this fic from the wеbsitе ranmafics dот ru)

"I don't know about gothic," Ranma replied, "but if you were aiming at gloomy... Not bad."

"Good." Usagi nodded. "Mourning or not, but there better be no asking me about love in the near future."

"This..." Akane couldn't find words. Her friend's sudden change of image unsettled her.

"For a real Goth girl, your costume isn't elaborate enough," Ami assessed with critical eye. "But as a base it's acceptable."

"All right," Usagi agreed. "I think the elaborate details up when I couldn't sleep because of grim thoughts. Let's now test how well I can punish and inflict justice. Moon tiara action."

A bluish-black disc zipped across the plain, cutting through bushes and striking sparks from rocks. Then it reversed direction, flying back directed by Usagi's will. Then forward again. It was only the fourth pass when it lost power and fell, rolling across the rocky ground with a clang.

"I still can," Usagi noted with grim satisfaction. Ranma haven't missed the fact that she was trying to look more gloomy than she was feeling. "Now for something serious..." She concentrated, then made a gesture like she was grabbing something out of thin air. Two small, glinting things materialized to the sides of her arm, then fell to the ground with quiet clatter. "Oopsie."

"What's wrong?" Ranma asked as she walked up closer to take a look.

"I'm afraid there wouldn't be much use of me, except hacking and slashing," Usagi replied as she picked two round, multifaceted crystals from the ground. One was dull golden, the other dull silvery. "I just thought that all my sceptres were either from ours with Mamo..ru's love, or from the Kingdom repositories." She lifted the golden crystal level with her eyes, scrutinizing it. "This is one more proof that Endimyon never existed in this world. But how did his crystal manage to follow me? A mystery. I now have both the Kinzuisho and Ginzuiso, both responsive as rocks." She sighed as she replaced the jewels in her subspace pocket.

"Let find our bearings," Ranma urged. "We had to catch our breath and stuff, but this world is a total unknown. Do you remember that walk in the dark and the guy made of white woodlice?"

"Yes, I do," Akane replied with a shudder.

"White woodlice?" Ami asked, confused.

"Oh, right!" Ranma snapped her fingers. "You were cooped up with that old lady doing your research while me'n Akane went to get the token... Well, we met a monster that kills with a touch, and not in a nice way, from what I could figure out of Ahta's warnings. Split into a swarm of woodlice-like things upon his death, too. Each as deadly. Probably burrow into your flesh or stuff. Anyways, do you remember that world?"

"Ew," Usagi commented.

"Yes... Yes, I do," Ami replied, alarmed. "I'm scanning, but there is nothing of notice so far. What are you implying? That there could be things out there that could kill us before we can even detect them?"

"That too," Ranma said. "Take robot snipers, for example. Or a Khas-eeeschaeet. There are most likely no such things, but let's make this assumption: we are in an enemy's backyard and they simply haven't reacted yet because they are lazy."

"Expect the worst?" Akane asked.

"Expect the worst we can handle," Ranma corrected her. "Because if there's something we can't, it's better to go out with a bang rather than be captured... I'm not giving up, mind you, but we _are_ ·clones with barely a week difference from our originals back home. In light of a total unknown waiting for us, knowing that death isn't as end of everything as it used to be is... comforting."

"Hey, that's my line," Usagi complained. "I'm the gloomy Goth here."

"I hope it doesn't come to that," Ami said. "But I see your point. What do you suggest?"

"Whatever happens," Ranma said, "we have to move quickly. When possible, use the folds of the land to hide from probable distant observers. Only stop moving in secluded locations between hills and such. And learn about the world, as fast and hard as we can."

"Seems reasonable," Akane agreed. "Keep alert, keep moving, know your adversary... Or if there is one."

"Let's go, then!" Ranma ran to the north, towards nearest mountains.

"Wait," Ami called after her, trying to catch up. "Let me tear my ribbons off so you can make a bikini."

"No way," Ranma shouted back over her shoulder. "If the fate threw me naked into such a scorcher with no shelter from the sun, hell if I let bikini lines spoil my suntan!"

"Exhibitionistic pervert," Akane deadpanned catching up to her. "Why did I marry you, again?"

The redhead's only reply was a lopsided grin.

Ami raised her hand to her earring, using it to manipulate the visor on the run. There were lines of text and graphs running across the semi-transparent mask.

"Well?" Ranma asked impatiently a couple minutes later as they were running in a steady rhythm.

"I'm afraid, nothing too reassuring," Ami replied. "The air is virtually empty, there are only a couple encrypted short wave broadcasts recepting weakly, one from nort-west, the other from north-east. There are no satellite signals of any kind. If we believe the briefing, it should be 22nd or 23rd century here. I thought at first that maybe they just dropped the use of radio. But there's silence on hyperwaves as well. There's only a faint echo of some interstellar transmission. I don't like this. I can only hope they just switched completely to optic cables and lasers. The air composition is not reassuring, either."

"What exactly are you afraid of?" Akane inquired with worry.

"I... don't know yet," Ami replied evasively. "I hope it's not what I fear it is. I have to scan more ground samples."

Three Senshi and one naked Ranma kept running to the north. The plain, slightly wavy, was stretching on monotonously. The stiff, grasping small bushes, while posing a minimal obstacle, were forcing them to meander a bit. The sun was scorching.

But they were running easily. These three magical girls and one martial artist could match a horse. Then the horse would be run into the ground and died while the girls would continue running.

"It looks like there's a road ahead!" Ranma shouted with joy, increasing her pace.

The others started running faster too, eager to find what kinds of clues Ami could pull from the road.

The more of the road became visible from beyond the smooth folds of the landscape, the more their joy dimmed. Reaching the road, the four girls walked out onto it to stop there in silence.

The road was running in a straight line, cutting through the desert with two ragged strips of grayed, cracked asphalt with a wide strip of desert ground in between them. A long time ago, each direction had two lanes. But now the asphalt was frayed at the edges, crumbling away and making them narrower, blurring the line between the road and the rocky roadside. In places the asphalt was missing altogether, giving way to rocky detritus. The stiff bushes were growing from the cracks.

"What you were afraid of," Ranma said looking into the distance. Yes, these were rain channels cutting across the road. No one was in a hurry to fill them. There were also sand drifts, without any traces of someone ever crossing them.

Ami did not reply. Crouching down, she moved her palm over the asphalt. Formulas were dancing across her visor.

Ranma noticed rusty frames in the distance and ran there. Others followed her. Up close these things were still vaguely car-shaped. Rusted to almost transparency, sagged, they were resting on their bellies, the tires having mostly crubmled away. It looked like they were standing here for eternity. Not too densely, but intermittently, blocking both lanes. The traffic turned to be right-hand so they were not in Australia.

"And no one tried to move them away," Usagi commented grimly. Her gothic look was quite right for the situation.

Ami stopped scanning, dismissing her visor with a sigh.

"Well?" Ranma urged.

"The traces... tell of a massive radioactive fallout that occurred in the past, from sixty to a hundred years ago. The levels are mostly back to normal now but in the first few months it was hell, enough to kill most living things many times over... These were barbaric, dirty bombs..." She walked up to one of the car husks, ripping the rusted shut hood away. Calling up her visor again, she scanned the engine remains. "I assume these cars stopped here when the electromagnetic pulse from the nuclear explosions burned their controlling electronics."

Akane gasped quietly.

"A brave new world, yeah," Ranma commented. "Have probably reached the stars, yeah. That good-for-nothing benefactor! Everything he touches really turns into crap!"

"And still, even the end of the world, even _such_ ·end of the world is better than remaining _there_ ," Usagi disagreed. "Because death at least gives way for new life."

"Maybe, not all of them have died out?" Akane suggested with trepidation.

"Of course, not!" Usagi said with conviction. "Someone is transmitting these broadcasts, right?"

"Robots, mourning their masters," Ranma joked darkly. "But jokes aside, this world ain't that bad. First, we can relax now. There are no such nasty things as evil, continent-spanning empires, hordes of killer robots or all-devouring gray goo. Secondly, we will be highly sought for! It's like martial arts heaven! Well, except saying goodbye to normal panties, instant noodle packs and toilet paper... That part sucks."

"Sought for?" Akane asked in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Well, a world after a nuclear war..." the redhead hinted. "Mad Max, the fist of the northern star..."

Akane just frowned.

"Oh, right, boy stuff." Ranma corrected herself: "Imagine this: the villages of survivors are far-between, there is no state, no law, only marauding gangs. Sengoku Jidai would look like heaven in comparison. And here we come, awesomely badass! We can even found an empire!"

"And these gangs all carry firearms, used to use them," Ami added absently, busy with scanning.

"And my healing powers have kissed us goodbye," Usagi added. "I can only amputate something unnecessary."

"Like his tongue," Akane quipped. "He wants to become an emperor. How about an empress?"

"Gack!" Ranma shuddered. "Thank you, but I am going to nightmarize me myself."

"Why are you talking like a girl?"

"Well, to... conform," the redhead replied evasively, clearly talking round corners.

"English doesn't distinguish between these forms anyway," Ami noted.

"Really?" Usagi was surprised, as she had a firm 'F' in English.

"Yeah," Ranma confirmed. "We are still long ways from Japan."

"Why English?" Akane asked.

"These bushes are endemic to the North American continent," Ami replied making a wide gesture. "The probability that we are in United States is high."

"There's a road sign over there," Ranma said, pointing. It was with its back to them, so they ran to see what was written on the rusted tin plate shaped like a stylized shield. The shield turned out to be painted blue, not all the paint having flaked away yet, with a big white number 15. There was a red strip running along its top, with "..RSTATE" still discernible on it.

Ami frowned: "So little data. Pity my computer isn't here anymore. With it, we would have pinpointed our location precisely!"

"But we are in the USA, right?" Ranma clarified.

"Now, definitely," Ami confirmed. "We are somewhere around the Mohave desert, if I'm not mistaken. It's California, the western coast."

"Where do we go?" Usagi asked glancing down the road that was running east to west. "On the positive side, I don't want to lie down and die anymore. That would be... disrespectful to the billions who died too early."

"Well, Japan is to the west, right? We only have to swim across the Pacific?" Akane clarified. Having just learned to swim, she was feeling ready to take on an ocean.

"Yes," Ami confirmed. "San-Francisco is somewhere to the west and Los Angeles is somewhere to the south. Both are sea ports. Although... If cars rusted so much in the dry desert, we are probably better off crossing the ocean on a raft."

"My danger sense," Ranma said, puzzled, "is telling me strange things. If we go East, we lose Ami."

"Only Ami?"Akane asked.

"Only her, and certainly her," Ranma confirmed. "I propose we count this as 'weird shit to stay far away from' and go west."

They ran west. Kilometers were flying by. The three Senshi weren't feeling the scorching sun at all. Ranma was using ki-reinforcement to make the resulting suntan thicker and smoother. They haven't spent an hour in this world yet, but her skin was already darkening.

Ruins started occurring to the sides of the road. Crumbling from age, half-buried in sand, the wooden houses were still carrying traces of white paint. There were low one-story ones with a wide-brimmed flat roof. Or tall two-story ones. All so crumbled that their shape was barely recognizable.

Everyone doubled their alertness, but nothing was moving in the ruins. Ami was scanning constantly, but there were no large life forms. There were only rats and insects, but that was wonderful, it meant this world still had life.

Soon, a skeleton of a city emerged from beyond a rise. That's what it looked like: blackened frames of skyscrapers with gaping breaches and floors hanging in the air. These were surrounded by a thicket of smaller high-rises, all crumbling.

"I hope we don't have to go there?" Akane asked with a shudder.

"We'll have to scout it," Ranma replied. "If anyone is still living there, it would be the best chance to observe the locals. Don't be so dejected! I doubt there is anyone in there. They had looted everything valuable long ago and moved to a place with water."

A gas station appeared on the right. It was a one-story brick shed, a separate canopy still holding miraculously on two thin struts and a couple car carcasses.

Ranma couldn't resist making a small detour to rummage inside, but she only found dust and trash. All cabinets were open, the rusty cash register was ripped open. There was a rotten matress in the corner, surrounded by rusty opened tin cans.

The ruins to the sides began merging into some semblance of a street, the plots of land shrinking and disappearing. The road curved in the northern direction, towards the faraway skeletal skycrapers. The girls stopped before a huge, shabby board "Welcome to Barstow City!"

"Let's turn away," Akane suggested. "I don't feel like venturing into this spooky dead city."

"You let your emotions fool you," Ranma disagreed. "I told you before, the most dangerous things to us are robot snipers. After them, living snipers. While the most safe is a broken terrain with limited visibility where we have advantage thanks to our ki senses and Ami. This city is the safest place to be!"

"Don't forget that we don't know what we could meet," the mentioned girl warned her. "Worst case, the probable enemy would have cloaking techniques or tech effective against us."

"Even so," the redhead did not give up, "it's much easier to disengage and take cover in the city."

"Then, would it have been safer to move away from the road?" Akane asked. "Why were we following that highway?"

"Because it's much easier to stumble onto someone that way?" Ranma shrugged.

"Onto an ambush, for example," Usagi suggested cheerfully.

"I hoped to find traces of human activity," Ami admitted. "Like a caravan route. Alas, no results so far. No one used this highway for decades. It is possible that on the plain people simply made new paths, more suitable for pedestrian and caravan traffic. But then the highway had to cross at least one. To be honest, my best hope is with the rocky terrain where roads are laid along most convenient routes so that the ways of the wild descendants of this civilization should match them. Especially at mountain passes.

"Also, highwaymen could set their ambushes there," agreed Ranma. "We could beat them up and question thoroughly."

"So, are we actively asking for it?" Akane said. "Risky."

"No more risky than them finding us first," Ranma parried, "when we'd have to make a camp for the night while still knowing nothing about them."

"I agree," Ami supported her. "Better us finding them first, while the factor of surprise is on our side to compensate for their knowledge of the land."

"I see," Akane resigned with displeasure. "But do we have to go into the city? Who could be there? It's a graveyard."

"Some looters," Ranma said. "Scrap metal foragers. What could you pick out of a dead city? I'm not a techie, but I think that's a lot."

They continued their way along the road. Closer to the city center, the ruins merged into one mass. Many of them were brick, multi-story. The highway began climbing up to a multi-level junction, then crashed down in a mess of concrete and rusty rebars. The girls jumped down there without slowing and continued meandering down the half-buried streets. They were taking caution when running and bounding up the hills of debris, to avoid causing a landslide.

The dead city had an oppressive air about it, everyone wanted to cross it quickly.

The skyscraper remains were already behind them, to the right, when Ami suddenly stopped amidst a clean stretch of the street. The two and three storied houses on the sides of it were yawning with empty shop-windows with piles of collapsed floors beyond. The rusty lampposts were standing straight.

"Weird," Ami mumbled. "What could it— Eek!"

A pack of huge rats rushed her, streaking from the ruins like gray lightning bolts. Each the size of a dog!

Smack-smack-smack, the rats sounded as they were send flying with a punt of the blue boot. Smack-smack - a jump to dodge - smack-smack-smack. Ami was hitting fast and precisely, no one even twitched to help her: that's Super Sailor Mercury for you.

"Did you mean these?" Ranma asked, lifting a brow.

"No! There's something really weird... The lack of my computer is so frustrating! Try to direct your ki senses underground. I'm reading flowing water, in pipes most probably, and some strange signals, maybe from living things."

Ranma concentrated. "Whoa! I almost missed them. There are sources of weird ki, mediocre but notably stronger than an untrained human. Some are close to the surface. Probably in the sewers. But others are quite deep. But that's on the edge of my perception, I may be wrong."

"Sources of weird ki?" Akane asked with alarm.

"Mutants, probably," Usagi presaged ominously. "Who else could live in such place?"

Akane cast a side glance at her, shivering. No, she was glad that this gloom and doom acting was helping her friend to overcome the loss of her loved one. It's just that this Gothic Sailor Moon was creepy. And it wasn't the black lipstick or other outward attributes. Usagi used to be so merry, so optimistic, that the dark humor on her part felt just disturbing.

"Maybe in that direction," Ami pointed, "there is a water pump. I propose we investigate."

"The longer we stay, the more I feel like getting away from this city," Akane admitted.

"Don't be such a scaredy cat," Ranma chastised her. "It's vital to learn as much as possible till we have to make a camp for the night. Would it be safer in the city or in the desert? What if there's a hungry spirits rampage at nights in the city? Or if some deadly critters crawl out at nights in the desert? By ourselves we could only learn this the hard way. But sneaking on the locals and listening in, on the other hand..."

"We should also learn who these locals are," Ami added. "The signals are way too strange. Maybe humans have been replaced with youkai? Or with aliens from space? The sooner we know this, the better."

"Well, when you put it that way," Akane reluctantly agreed.

"Don't worry," the redhead reassured her. "If we have to beat a hasty retreat, we'd rely on Mercury's fog. It's a thousand times better than any smoke bomb."

The four began sneaking along the street, having turned right at the nearest crossing. It turned out to be impossible to move across rooftops as they were used to: most buildings, four or five stories in height, had collapsed into themselves with only the walls remaining. And those that didn't weren't looking able to hold a person's weight. But there was not too much meandering involved as the streets were always at a right angle and the collapsed buildings were not an obstacle for the Senshi.

"One of these... anomalies is approaching from the right," Ami warned whey they were nearing a crossing.

"Yeah, one of the sources of this weird ki," Ranma agreed.

The four of them squeezed into a pocket between the wall of the nearest building and the mess of its collapsed innards. Hiding in the shadows, they froze peeking out of the windows.

A... man walked from beyond the corner. Dressed in ragged pants and boots, his bare torso consisted of a mass of grayish-green scabs, ugly skin creases and red film like that on a barely healed wound. His ribs were protruding, as well as the muscles on his wiry arms with prominent joints. In his right one he was carrying a very worn and chipped baseball bat.

"Here we are," Usagi whispered in Akane's ear, almost making her jump. "A mutant."

It looked like he heard that. Tensing, he raised his weapon into guard position as he turned his bald, nose-less head towards the girls, allowing them a clear look at his milky eyes and lip-less mouth, with teeth standing out making the unlucky man look like a zombie.

"Sh," Ranma hissed at her comrades.

"Probably, rats," the mutant grumbled hoarsely, then limped on his way. Soon he disappeared behind a corner and the redhead allowed herself a comment: "That fella got it hard... But he is definitely human. Also, his boots are new. The horizon is clear, others are milling underground."

They climbed out of the cover, listening carefully.

"Did he mutate from radiation?" Akane asked worriedly. "If the war was a hundred years ago, does that mean there are still highly radioactive places around?"

"I'm watching it constantly," Ami reassured her. "There's no radiation anywhere, except the heightened background. But radiation doesn't work that way. It produces mutants only in movies, in real life you either survive it or die."

"So it was their common ancestor who mutated?" Ranma asked. "Because there are several dozen of them, all feeling rather the same to my ki senses."

"I don't know," Ami admitted. "I don't understand. We have to get up close to one and scan him. But let's watch them first. I hope it was just my imagination, but he felt... fleetingly wrong for my Senshi senses. Let's be on our guard, in case demons are involved."

"Then we definitely have to investigate these mutants!" Ranma perked up.

"Wait, let's tear a bow for you," Akane suggested casting a disapproving side glance at her.

"Not now!" The redhead waved her away. "We aren't going to let them see us anyway. Let it be an extra motivation for sneaking better."

After a couple blocks there was still no sign of a sewer access. A a small square opened ahead, surrounded by intact buildings. It looked like an industrial zone was beginning here.

"Let's go up to the roofs, maybe?" Ranma suggested with unexpected uncertainty. "I don't feel anyone nearby, we left them all at our five. But my danger sense... It prickles weirdly."

The sun was shining brightly on the small square ahead, casting deep shadows along the walls. The silence was complete, especially ominous amidst a dead city inhabited by mutants.

"We would be visible from afar," disagreed Ami. "While I can quickly fill the square with fog. Collect yourself, Ranma-kun, this is so unlike you."

"Heh..." The redhead scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "With this new... ah, nevermind."

With new what? Akane thought. Is he inventing an another insane technique? Now I have to worry for him, he won't spill it until it is complete.

"Let's cross the square," suggested Ami. "There is a water pump in that building over there, we can ambush those who performs maintenance on it. There are many sewer tunnels but I'm not sure which of the entrances are used. My subterranean scan radius is too small while there ruins are a real mess."

"If sitting down in the ambush helps you to collect your thoughts, then why not?" Ranma agreed.

The four girls began sneaking across the square, looking watchfully around.

When they were in the middle of the square, Ami suddenly stopped, fiddling with her visor controls. Her frown was visible even through the visor filled with formulas.

"What's wrong?" Ranma grew wary.

"It's nothing," Ami hastily reassured her. "Just interference. I'm receiving low-frequency magnetic waves the brushless electric motor of the pump, but it keeps doubling. Here it goes again. Either the pump is going to break, or something is wrong with my visor."

"Do you hear that?" Usagi asked.

There was a faint sound like car tires across gravel.

"It can't be!" Akane exclaimed.

"Several... no, two ki sources are coming," Ranma warned, preparing to jump onto the pump station roof. "Feels like humans, not mutants. Average, a bit stronger than Ukyou."

"That's it!" Ami exclaimed, vexed at herself. "I am simply receiving pulsations from one more brushless motor!"

"I wonder if these humans know there are mutants down there," Akane said.

"Should we greet and warn them?" Usagi added, blowing her identity. It was apparent that her usual kind and caring self was lurking just below the goth shell.

"Let's catch them?" Ranma proposed suddenly.

"Catch?" Akane lifted one brow. "Why? Talk fast."

The sound was coming very close, there were mere seconds left to make a decision.

"Contact them," Ranma corrected herself trying to cram as much words in as little time as possible. "Surprise. Not their territory. We look harmless. Square's good for surrounding in the fog."

"What if bandits? And, Ranma—"

"Take them down, interrogate," she interrupted her.

"I'm ready," Ami said in agreement.

"Likewise," Usagi added, uncharacteristically collected as she lifted a hand as if to scratch her forehead.

Time ran out. Ranma had a fleeting thought she was missing something. Frowning, the redhead concentrated harder on her ki senses.

A long, low car rolled from behind a corner, swaying languidly on the potholes. Silvery, it was all in spots and streaks where the silvery paint was gone and the bare metal was polished thoroughly to a silvery shine. The car looked alien in this city of crumbling ruin. Four headlights were frowning from under its front wings protruding like rectangular brows. The straight, massive bumper was grinning with six oval cross-bars. The raised rear wings were protruding sharply over the coverless trunk with bags piled in it. This miracle of engineering even had a windshield! It was almost intact, only a couple of bullet holes.(note 1)

The car stopped sharply, its front end dipping for a moment. The front doors flew open, and two huge... Indians? jumped from the car at once. Both were of very similar build: the same barrel-like chest, the same arms like bison legs, the same leather pants. But one was bald, his face painted white with a black design, a big bone through his nose. The other, who climbed out of the driver seat, had short black hair, with dark eyes on a face with high cheek bones.

"Holy shit!" the hairy Indian exclaimed with excitement in English.

"Grampy Bone sez: always keep your eyes open," the painted one responded. "Then you won't miss a treasure."

Ranma noted that both had a knife and a large handgun. While there was a holder with bigger guns visible under the car roof. But why were her three comrades looking at her like that? What's with the half-lidded stares?

"Gimme a fist, bro!" the painted Indian said with a feeling, like he was moved. "The detour was worth this moment alone, even if the bloody twelfth had collapsed a long time ago!"

"You're right, bro! Brofist!"

Leaning over the car roof, they tried to bump fists but failed to reach each other: the car was impressively big, the roof alone level with ranma's eyes. Grunting, both left the cover of the opened doors to lean over the hood and bump fists at last.

Decent moving, for someone using their ki on an instinctive level, Ranma noted. Used to rely on weapons in combat, but probably can draw these guns of theirs in a blink on an eye.

"Ranma," Akane injected sardonically. "I understand. I am prepared to put up with you having needs. But I'm beginning to be jealous of them over you."

"Huh?" the redhead replied, distracted from her tactical analysis. "Eh?"

Raising a brow, Akane glanced her over, top to bottom then bottom to top.

A sharp keening, like teakettle boiling up, assaulted everyone's ears when Ranma finally got it. The redhead blushed down to her armpits. Ami stumbled when her back bow was suddenly torn away. Blue ribbons flashing through the air, Ranma vanished into thin air like a mirage as she employed her invisibility technique.

"You'll know next time how to sunbathe," Akane stated with deep satisfaction.

(シーンブレイク)

August 13, 2014. Translated August 14, 2014. Corrected October 15, 2015.

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
 **Chrysalis Highwayman** is an almost exact replica of 1958 Chrysler Imperial, with slightly different grille and front bumper. This thing is 5.7 meters long and 2.06 meters wide.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Нуммминорих Кута


	2. Broforce Duo

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Kunihiku Ikuhara, Naoko Takeuchi and the creative teams of Interplay, Obsidian and Bethesda.

(シーンブレイク)

 **Annulled Destiny II:  
Wild Wasteland**

(シーンブレイク)

From now on, the Japanese speech is shown using 『Japanese double quotation marks』 (the heroes switch often as speaking English is hard for most of them)

(シーンブレイク)

 **Chapter 2,**  
 **Broforce Duo**

(シーンブレイク)

 _Narf's Third Law: A sufficiently motivated barbarian is indistinguishable from a siege engine.  
(a Spacebattles forum wisdom)_·

(シーンブレイク)

"You saw that?" exclaimed the dark-haired Indian. "She disappeared! Simply vanished into the thin air! Are we seeing things?"

"We be see that too,(note 1)" disagreed the painted one with a bone in his nose. "Two cannot see things at once."

"Maybe we are high on the weeds you used yesterday to season the iguana?" the dark-haired one said in accusing voice. "It felt suspicious at the time."

"Datura not grow in these places," the painted one replied, offended. "We be wandering longer than you. You not know half the weeds."

"Touche," the dark-haired one relented. "But, shouldn't we offer our names?" He turned to face the three sailor-suited girls. "I am Narg." He hit his muscled chest with his fist.

"We be Sulik," the painted one offered, squinting his milky eyes.

"Ten— Akane Tendo," she was first offer, making a polite bow. Glad to meet you."

"Ami Mizuno."

"Tsukino Usagi," the goth one offered backwards after a small pause.

"But what three such beauties do in such place with no weapons?" Sulik inquired. "Or four?" Akane noticed him cast a surreptitious glance along the buildings surrounding the square.

"We..." Akane hesitated. Why is Ranma never there when you need him. "We hoped to learn more about this world."

"About this world...?" Narg was taken aback. Then he figured it out: "So you are aliens! What planet are you from? Not here to conquer Earth, I hope?"

"We be thinking, aliens must be small and green?" Sulik asked doubtfully.

"We are from Earth," Ami hurried to reassure them. "Just... Not from this one. From a parallel universe."

"We are not going to conquer," Akane added. "We—"

"Are just traveling," Ranma's voice interrupted her.

Everyone turned around to find the redhead standing in an empty second-story window, against the backdrop of sky, dressed in a minimalistic blue bikini of tied together strips.

"Glad to meet you." She jumped down to the ground, her entire body flexing so that her bare feet did not make a sound. "Ranma saotome."

"Just traveling?" Sulik stared at her, his face unreadable.

"From a parallel universe?" Narg asked, agitated. "Like captain Flash and Dimension Hoppers?"

"Erm, Captain Flash?" Akane asked. "Never heard of him."

"Old world make many comic books," Sulik said wisely. "So many that not all are used for wiping asses yet."

"Something like that," Narg agreed. "We are traveling too." He exchanged glances with his comrade. "On a pilgrimage."

Ranma smiled barely perceptibly: a pilgrimage, yeah. With such guns and cool ride.

A tense silence followed. The contact wasn't going well. Sulik was squinting suspiciously, from time to time sweeping the surroundings with his eyes for the second half of the ambush. He was hiding it skilfully but Ranma noticed anyway that he didn't like Usagi for some reason. Ami got flustered, then obviously dove into some calculations like an ostrich into sand. Akane kept glancing back at her comrades, unsure how to continue. Only Narg was grinning widely, friendly at the first glance but still cagey. Ranma was beginning to contemplate if they should back away to search other, more accomodating locals they could pump for information.

Usagi was keeping silent after she noticed the increased attention to her persona. It was her clever plan to conceal her rotten skill with English. Additionally, she was making a grim face so that no one figures it out.

Finally Sulik had enough and asked bluntly: "We be not understand. Your friend look like raider, but eyes are different."

Usagi tensed. They found her out!

"Excuse me?" Akane asked, confused, as she racked rer brain for the meaning of the word 'raider'.

Ranma lifted a brow. Could it be that simple?

Usagi was straining and groaning until she managed to squeeze out a bit of English: "Me not a rider. No horse."

This made even Sulik blink, despite his extensive knowledge of many tribal dialects.

"I am sorry," Akane apologized. "Our friend... has some difficulties with her English."

"Twenty points out of the hundred," Ranma explained.

Usagi laughed sheepishly scratching the back of her head: "I learn... Will learn now."

Narg snorted trying to hold the laughter back. He failed, laughing loudly and nudging Sulik with his elbow.

"This is what the spirits mean when talk about a hole in the head," the other Indian uttered wisely.

Usagi was giggling sheepishly, scratching the back of her head. Ami was silently suffering embarrassment for her.

The tension was just gone. Which proved Ranma's hunch: it was Usagi's dress that set them on edge. She cast a side glance at the girl as she remembered _who_ ·was sporting mohawks in 'Fist of the Northern Star' and 'Mad Max'... She made a note to herself, to talk to the neo-Goth about changing her image.

"We must warn you," Akane piped in hurriedly, "that there are mutants living in this city. Most of them under the ground."

"Mutants?" Narg said, disappointed. "A pithy. We hoped there are ghouls still living here."

"Ghouls?" Ami asked with alarm, only vaguely familiar with this English word. "As in undead?"

"So there are undead living here?" the redhead asked.

"You mean, ghosts?" Narg was suddenly worried.

"Ghouls are name for folks changed by radiation," Sulik explained. "Not ghosts."

"Oh, right." Narg laughed with relief. "They only look like zombies from horror stories. They are pretty alive, just ugly. Their skin is green and a mess, all covered with ties like an old scar... But you can't mistake them for mutants."

"I see," Ami replied with relief. "It seems these are synonyms."

"Synonyms?" Narg did not understand.

"Two similar words," Sulik suggested. "Like zombies and ghouls."

"How do mutants look?" Ranma injected trying to keep them from slipping into lexical depths. "Are they green too? Or blue?"

"Blue?" Sulik replied. "No, mutants be only green, like a mutfruit. Big, lumpy."

"Believe it or not, there are blue ones," Narg corrected him. "Or were, in the Great-granny's times. They are called Nightkins, were the meaniest of the Master's army. And worse, invisible."

"Invi-i-isible?" Sulik drawled. "Your esteemed ancestor probably tell you bedtime tales."

"Not tales," Narg rebuked indignantly. "But rather a pre-war tech. It's called Stealth-Boy! Turn it on and you are invisible."

"Guys," Ranma injected. "This all is interesting, but how to tell apart a mutant? We are only one hour in this world, so far we met only rats and... those who live here. But as you describe them, they look like ghouls."

"Really?" Narg perked up. "Well, mutants are like... Nine or ten feet tall, all solid muscle. Their biceps is like a Brahmin hind. In short, you can't mistake them for ghouls. Ghouls are lean, skin and bones."

"About three meters," Ranma converted to familiar units. "Some hulks they are."

"So there are ghouls living here," Ami summed up. "The one we saw was as tall as the average man. And he had... a very unhealthy skin condition."

"Excellent!" Narg rejoiced. "We were afraid someone had slaughtered them since the Great-granny's times. She herself did not know if they survived. After Master was dead his army dispersed, its remains migrating to the East, right through these parts. There was no one to check, this city is a middle of nowhere."

"Now talk them to let two outsiders to their computers," Sulik reminded him the next hurdle to overcome.

"We'd better ask them to search the coordinates of the Thirteen for us," Narg corrected. "You know that me 'n computers don't mix." He made a face. "I hope they won't send us on a wild goose chase across the wasteland in search of an electronic thingamaboobie with unpronounceable name."

"Excuse me," Ami piped in nervously. "You said computers? Maybe I can help."

"In return you will tell us about this world," Ranma was quick to inject. "Who is who, what people live where and where are doom places."

"Ranma!" Akane exclaimed reproachfully.

"Barter?" Sulik asked. "Your tek.. ni-cal expertise for ours knowledge of the Wasteland? All right."

"I don't know what kind of computers they have in this world," Ami warned with embarrassment, "but I can try. I have experience of... working with two different technological bases. And a tool that can help." She made a point of touching her visor.

"Then your services first," Narg said. "If it works... If you can do it then we will tell you about the Wasteland. Deal?"

"Deal," Ranma agreed.

"Now we only have to find the Vault entrance," Narg concluded glancing around. "This Necropolis is so huge. In Great-granny's stories it was so easy. She came, she found the water shed, she slit the mutants' throats and saved the ghouls."

Akane shivered. It was obvious this world was far from herbivorous, but still...

"Water shed?" asked Ranma.

"Vault?" Ami asked at the same time. "As in bank vault?"

"The water shed," Narg explained, "is where they have their water pump. The way down to the Vault must be not far from it."

"Vaults," Sulik explained, "are big underground towns. People of the old world build them to survive the war. Stupid, easier not start it."

"Of course!" Narg agreed as he finally realized that there could be someone that doesn't know these commonplace basics. "Vaults are underground habitats for a thousand people, built to hold for a hundred years. My ancestors came from the Vault Thirteen." He puffed up his chest. "My great-grandmother is known as Vault Dweller!"

"Oh, I see," Ami said. "Shelters. But why are these called vaults?"

"Why are these vaults?" Narg did not understand. "These... were always called that? Hmm. Yes, 'Vaults of the Future' if one can believe the surviving roadside boards."

"Vaults are shelters," Sulik agreed. "We be never thinking why. It just is."

『Etooooo...』 Usagi drawled forlornly, feeling completely lost. What were they talking about?

『Don't worry,』 Akane reassured her. 『We will definitely tell you everything.』

"So, find the shed where the pump is?" Ranma clarified.

"Yes," Narg affirmed. "There was an another landmark, a building with a large hall where Seth lurked in the past. But there are so many of them! What if it had collapsed since? You can't tell if ruins had a large hall or not."

『Ami-chan,』 Akane asked in her native tongue. 『Isn't the water shed that building over there, in which, you said, a water pump is working?』

『Why do I have an impression that that should have been a single word, 'watershed',』 Ami mumbled. 『Huh...? Yes, of course!』 She switched to English addressing two Indians: "Excuse me. You don't have to search for the water shed, it's right behind me."

Both were overjoyed, immediately they began to argue how to easier find the way down to the sewers.

Ami glanced across the square as she peered under the ground: "There's one tunnel going... Aha, a hidden manhole!" She walked up to an unassuming pile of asphalt pebbles and stirred it up it with her foot uncovering rusty iron.

"Just as great-granny said!" exclaimed Narg. "One crawl-hole right in the square!" He hurried to clean it. Together the Indians soon cleared a rusty cover.

"What should we expect?" Ranma asked. "These ghouls, which are they?" She winced involuntarily as she racked her brain for a suitable English word. "Their attitude?"

"People like any other." Narg shrugged. "There are all sorts of the. Often sharp-tongued and recalcitrant, but that's not what you are asking about, I think?"

"Old," Sulik added. "Living from before the war. In time so long one either grow wise or go to the ancestors."

"From before the war?" Ami was amazed. "But that's... Almost a century!"

"One hundred and sixty," Narg corrected. "The old world burned up in two thousand seventy seven, while now is... Twenty two hundred forty eight... I think."

"Forty two," Sulik corrected him. "Learn counting better—"

"Or merchants scam me just because," Narg finished with a sigh. "I know, I know." He looked at Ami's befuddled face. "I don't know how comes, but the ghouls live since almost two centuries ago and show no signs of going to die."

"One hundred sixty..." Ami recovered from stupefaction. "Two hundred... I don't understand. My model needs correcting. I have to... Learn more."

『Don't worry,』 the redhead consoled her switching the talk to their native tongue. 『Time's what you'll have in spades.』

『So are they all like granny Cologne?』 Akane suggested, trying to find familiar analogies to comfort herself with wishful thinking.

『Or like grandpa Happousai,』 Ranma snarked ominously.

『Banish the thought!』 Akane hit her playfully upside the head. 『Don't go tempting fate.』

Narg heaved and threw the rusty manhole cover aside. The darkness smelt with stale air and fungal mold. Making sure there was no one down there, Ami began climbing down, impatiently but still testing each bracket of the rusty ladder. Her visor was glowing faintly in the dark.

『Well, what's down there?』 Akane hurried her worriedly.

"There is no animal life," the other girl called back switching back to English. "The tunnel is dry, two meters wide. Toward the south it's blocked with rubble, the pile seems artificial. Towards the north it's free. Turns towards north-west in twenty seven meters from the manhole."

"It is where we came from, right?" Akane asked. "Where there were ghouls under the ground?"

"Yes, although it passes under a different street," Ami confirmed.

"Good!" Narg said as he began climbing down. With a grunt of effort he squeezed his mighty shoulders through the opening barely wide enough for him. The rusty brackets were groaning under his weight. Then there was a dull sound of boots landing on rubble. "Hey, it's dark down here like in devil's asshole! Drats, I have to climb back out to get atorch."

"You always do first, think after," Sulik said wisely. "Wait, we be bringing."

"Grab the vault suit too!" Narg shouted from the darkness.

"Volutosyutto?" Akane echoed the unfamiliar word.

"Sure thing!" Sulik called back as he headed towards the car. After digging through the trunk he returned with some sort of red cardboard sticks and a small bundle. "You coming?" he asked the three girls huddled around the manhole. He began climbing down, then paused, looked over Usagi's haircut with a critical eye and added: "We be advising: you go last." Then he squeezed his shoulders through the hole and was gone.

『He meant,』 Ranma translated for Usagi, 『that you can be mistaken for a bandit with such a haircut.』

『She wasn't watching movies of that sort,』 Akane added hypocritically: she herself was a closet fan of the after midnight channel, having used each occasion of staying home alone to watch _all_ ·sorts of movies.

『I misaimed, then,』 Usagi drawled fingering her Mohawk. 『It's a villainous style here, eh?』 She smiled lopsidedly. 『Fate's humor is as always pitch-black. All right, I'll hang back.』

Ranma glanced around, then slid down the manhole barely touching the brackets. Akane followed her. Usagi was the last to go, grunting and huffing. Halfway down he lost her grip and smacked down onto concrete rubble.

『Great,』 the redhead sniped. 『Now every creature for a kilometer ahead knows that someone is coming.』

『It was an accident,』 Usagi made an excuse in a loud whisper. 『Ow, ow, ow.』

『Ranma,』 Akane voiced her disapproval.

『How could one lose one's grip when possessing tenfold strength,』 Ranma grumbled.

There was a crunch and a flare flared up in Sulik's hand. "We be going first?" he proposed.

"Better me," Ranma disagreed. "And Me— Ami. I will sense enemies by their... spirit," she stuttered trying to translate the untranslatable concept of ki. "She will find all traps."

The dry concrete tunnel had an oval cross-section, only a couple meters wide. The floor along the left side was raised forming a shelf about thirty centimeters high. Standing on it, the girls were almost level with the Indians, the latter being a head taller.

"Good," Sulik agreed. "Interesting."

The redhead and Ami moved to the frond and the group started prowling down the tunnel. Before reaching the building with the pump in it, the tunnel curved softly to the right, going under the ruins at an angle to the streets above. A faint, flickering fire light could be seen far ahead. Ranma and Ami moved even further forward checking carefully for traps. All was clean. In this order they reached a T-intersection with a wider tunnel, this one lit from somewhere beyond their line of sight.

The two forward scouts slowed and the others caught up to them. Ranma gestured that there was a trap in the opening and that she sensed someone to the right. The Indians obviously did not understand her hand signs, so she gestured them to stop with a deliberately obvious palm held out.

Sulik hid the flare behind his back to lessen the light falling onto the far wall of the wide tunnel.

"Careful, there is a trap in the opening," Ami whispered. "There are two ghouls to the right, thirty meters... sorry, a hundred feet beyond the corner. Standing still in a small expansion at a T-intersection. I think they are armed. om there, straight on and to the left, but it's too far to tell what is in there."

The flickering light was coming from the right. It looked like there was a torch on the near wall in a couple meters from the opening, invisible beyond the corner. Its reddish light allowed to see two shelves running along both tunnel sides: this one was about four meters wide, almost more rectangular in cross-section, with rounded ceiling edges.

"Very good ambush," Sulik approved. "The torch make the enemy bright and blind him."

"And here's the rope," Ranma added cheerfully as she pointed at an almost invisible wire strung across the opening on the ankle height. She peered cautiously over the corner. Hmphed, then pulled back. "Goes to a big-ass shotgun with some kind of drum."

"It's au-to-matic shotgun," Narg explained in a hushed voice. "A crappy gun, wears out too fast. Nowadays you only see them in traps. Now, Pankor Jackhammer on the other hand..."

"Jekku..hammer?" Ranma echoed, confused.

『What's with the stench?』 Akane voiced her concern with a whisper. 『There is no decomposing body over there, I hope?』

Ranma peered beyond the corner again. 『Nah. There are spots of old blood all over, and little bones, _probably_ ·from rats. It's these that got spoiled.』

"There are no dead bodies nearby," affirmed Ami. "But these ghouls... I can't figure them out. If we just could move closer..."

"If we all move closer, we could startle them," Ranma reasoned "And they shoot us down." She glanced back at the locals. "The Indians are hulking, one is enough for a panic."

"We are not Indians, we are _tribals_ ," Narg corrected. "Indians died out in these parts."

"Huh?" Ranma frowned at the unfamiliar word.

『They meant 'ones living in a tribe-based society',』 Ami explained in her native tongue. 『Or I think so. Usually this word means 'savages', but I don't think they referred to themselves using such meaning.』

『Aha, people of tribes,』 Ranma said. 『Got it.』

"However they are called, what do we do?" Akane reminded them trying to switch the conversation back to English.

『Well, a harmless girlie goes first,』 the redhead explained the obvious, continuing in Japanese as she dod not notice Akane's attempt. 『Burly men enter later, after she succeeds in distracting attention... Why are you looking at me like that? It's classics!』

『Insidious,』 agreed Usagi. 『But a harmless girlie emerging amidst this city from a passage that had been carefully hidden... Suspicious.』

『Well,』 Ranma found a counter, 『then ya'd have to ramp up the charm.』 She blossomed with a sickeningly sweet smile and batted her eyelashes.

『Gah!』 Akane face-palmed. 『You are overdoing it so much it's painful to watch! Let's delegate this to...』 She turned around.

Ami started, making an involuntary step back. Usagi shrugged and smoothed her Mohawk.

『..let me do this,』 Akane finished with a sigh.

Ranma 'hmmph'-ed. Then she addressed everybody, switching back to English: "How do you think, how long ago did they last see a real girl?"

"Very long ago," agreed Sulik.

"Maybe not since the great-granny was here," added Narg.

"See!" Ranma lifted her index finger imperiously as as she addressed Akane. "Who said we need a _real_ ·girl?"

Akane just sighed heavily.

"Well, I am going," Ranma said over her shoulder. "Stay sharp."

"I'm watching," Ami affirmed. "No changes so far."

The redhead concentrated, flexed her shoulders taking a relaxed stance, then she strutted out stepping over the trap-wire smoothly.

When the obscuring torch was behind her, she could finally see that the vaguely visible ghouls were suitably stupefied. Her own shadow was an obstacle, cast forward all over the tunnel. The redhead was moving smoothly, holding back the instinctive urge to speed up, sauntering along the right shelf. The ghouls were staring, rubbing their eyes - in short, behaving completely human-like. Both dressed in ragged pants and sturdy boots, with bare torsos if you can call these things that. They were standing in a cylindrical room at the far opening where the straight tunnel continued, at different sides of in, on the shelves that curved along the room walls. Were they standing at the near opening, they'd be virtually invisible, but then they'd be unable to see the torch-lit tunnel either. One had a shotgun over his shoulder, the other one had a spear.

The ghouls began exchanging words, obviously asking each other if they were seeing things. Ranma decided to make the sight more interesting, so she jumped down into the ditch, making a point of flexing her entire body as she landed. Aha, they froze again. Niiiice.

The redhead strutted through the T-section like it was the natural thing to do. A brief glance to the left revealed a throat of the tunnel where the torch light did not reach. It was dark, silent and with no traces of any ki. Which wasn't saying much: she could barely feel animals and untrained humans unless they attacked.

Her hips swaying, she passed between the two ghouls who were staring, entranced, down her cleavage. If you can call it that: the strips making up her improvised bikini were narrow to begin with, and the very design was trying to make them narrower by wringing them.

Barely holding back the urge to shudder, Ranma fixed the ghouls up close from the corner of her eye. Their smell wasn't strong, but it was of a mix of urine and an old, rotting wound. The right one, with a shotgun over his shoulder, was more pink, glossy-smooth but all covered in ties. His weapon was a worn, double-barreled shotgun. The left one had a crude spear in his hands, a sharpened triangle of scrap metal on a fragile handle of a battered aluminum pipe — a purely stabbing weapon. His skin was greenish, flaking, dry as parchment. He looked about to shake off his stupor.

"How do you do, boys?" Ranma twirled around in a pirouette to make two naturally looking steps back, to distract them even further from the lit tunnel. "I am Ranko! Glad to meet you!" She smiled disarmingly, cursing inwardly: the damn English was wrecking her performance. How could you smooth-talk when your vocabulary is barely above that of the school course?

"Name's Mike," the one with the shotgun puffed up. One tie was going across the left side of his face forming a fold from the eye socket to the jaw. His teeth were sticking out of red, inflamed-looking gums.

"Erm, why such... err... beauty suddenly in our rotten dungeons?" the right one, with the spear, inquired. His head was cowered with something that was _probably_ ·a buzz-cut, unless he was growing literal spines like a hedgehog. His parchment-dry wrinkled face even had lips, but when he talked it was noticeable that there were more gaps in his mouth than teeth, with rough steel dentures on the left side.

Ranma grinned widely. Gotcha, pals.

"It's a trap!" the green one realized too late.

Mike grabbed at his shotgun but froze as he heard something from behind him. Slowly, already afraid of what he'd see there, he turned around. Two tribals were looming at an arm's length, their muscles bulging ominously. "Uh-oh!"

"Gack!" The green one jumped away holding his spear in front of him protectively. Unfortunately for him, there was a wall there. He bent down in a coughing fit using the spear as a crutch.

"It is all right, they are friends," Ranma tried to reassure him as she flowed backwards into the dark tunnel.

"Hello!" Narg grinned from ear to ear. "We are, uh, pilgrims, that's who we are. Searching for the Holy Thirteen to visit the home of the ancestors.

"As he say," Sulik added. "The spirits bring us here."

"Uhh, ehh, the spirits, of course," Mike croaked glancing nervously at his shotgun then at the crowd of outsiders. The tribals were grinning in a friendly manner, Akane too. Ami was holding her hand on the earring, graphs and formulas dancing across her visor making the girl look decidedly alien.

The ghoul slowly replaced the weapon on his shoulder. He obviously decided that his boomstick would be as effective against this wandering circus as kicking an elephant in the nuts.

Seeing that they weren't going to be killed right now, the second one unstuck himself from the wall with a groan, then asked cautiously: "Mind if I ask where did you learn about this passage from?"

"Great-granny told me," Narg explained proudly, "how she snuck through this very passage to the rear of the mutants who were guarding the water shed. Just as she said: in the middle of the square, near the shed."

"But it was hidden," Mike drawled with disappointment. "Or did I screw up again while refreshing it?"

"The Vault Dweller herself?" his partner was quick to grasp the important part. "So are you her son?"

"Great-grandson," Narg corrected proudly.

"How does the unforgettable Nataly do?" Mike perked up.

"Well, err..." Narg was taken aback. "It's twenty years since she died."

"Ya tactless knucklehead," The second ghoul smacked Mike upside the head with the blunt end of his spear.

"Eeeh, I keep forgetting how short-lived the smoothskins are," he mumbled guiltily.

Ami was scanning the ghouls discretely, there was a growing frustration visible in her features.

"How did you get to our parts?" the spear-toting ghoul asked cautiously.

"A pilgrimage through the places of ancestor's glory," Narg explained. "To be honest, we didn't think someone is still living here. Not after the master's army."

"Yeah, the Master's army was—"

The fact that Usagi had wandered off was made known, loudly, as she rocketed out of the dark side tunnel with a shriek, stumbling and crashing into the opposite wall.

"Careful!" the green one warned as he changed the grip on his spear to point-down. "It's like a breeding ground of them rats down there! Miss them and they'd lop your foot off."

"Why do not you block the tunnel," Akane asked as she helped the Goth one onto her feet, "if it is that bad?"

"And lose the freebies?" the spear-toting ghoul asked, inscomprehending.

"It's like a resort here," Mike added with a scratchy laugh. "You stand here doing nothing and the chowder comes by itself."

Akane didn't understand the word 'chowder' but she figured the meaning because he licked his gums dreamily. She shuddered.

Must repeat her survival training, Ranma noted. Such big, juicy rats, and such inappropriate reaction to them.

Usagi was babbling barely audibly about 'a horse-sized mole with teeth thiiis big'. The other girls dismissed this as a nervous rant while the locals couldn't understand the language.

"Would you lead us to the Vault?" Narg asked the ghouls. "Great-granny told me everything, but compared to her stories the tunnels are somewhat longer and... branchier."

"Here, he will," The spear-toting ghoul pushed Mike forward. "There's not much use of him anyway."

"So I will!" Mike said indignantly. "Follow me."

"Gimme the boomstick," the partner stopped him.

Mike sighed as he handed the shotgun over. Then he held a hand out as if expecting something.

"The spear stays with me," was a harsh reply. "Or should I waste a shell on a rat?"

Grumbling discontentedly, Mike led the guests.

Led by the ghoul, they stretched in a line. Usagi carefully maneuvered to the rear, as further away from their smelly guide as possible. Ami, on the other hand, mover forward as she kept scanning him.

Ranma, Akane and the tribals were alert, but the tunnel was stretching on uninterrupted, without a sign of any traps, hidden passages or other surprises.

『This cannot be,』 Ami moaned quietly, unable to hold back her emotions anymore.

『Something doesn't add up?』 the redhead sympathized in a whisper.

『Such organisms simply cannot exist!』 Ami hissed. 『Both have a cancer in a... it's not just a terminal stage, it's something indescribable! It seems their bodies are made up of metastases only!』

『Well, looks like it,』 Ranma agreed. 『With their hides—』

『You do not understand!』 Ami fumed. 『Such things simply cannot be stable! Their bodies should have destroyed themselves in a week tops!』 She deflated with a sigh of pure frustration. 『But they live their second century now.』

『Don't worry yourself like that,』 Akane consoled her. 『You will figure it out, I know. You will take a blood sample and find this mysterious factor that is confusing everything.』

"We are there," Ranma interrupted them.

The tunnel connected to an even wider one where the dry ditch was completely covered with a floor of rusty grate. To the right, this wide tunnel was disappearing in darkness, crisscrossed with barely visible rows of barricades of concrete chunks and rusty rebar. To the left, the ceiling was rising, then floor was rising over the grate in a half-meter high concrete ramp, then the tunnel was ending in a steel wall with a quite unusual opening shaped like a cogwheel. The gate of the same shape was visible beyond it, partly rolled to the side. A dim light of a faraway light bulb was reaching from between the rusty teeth.

"The Twelfth," Mike proclaimed proudly.

(シーンブレイク)

July 24, 2015. Corrected October 16, 2015. Translated October 27, 2015.

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
I'm not sure if I got the Sulik-speech right: I last played FO2 long ago, and I almost exclusively played the Russian fan-translations, long before I learned English. So all I know about his speech is that it is very peculiar. I hope the fan translators at least got the general style right as I try to recreate the original by extrapolating several sample phrases from the wiki.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Нуммминорих Кута


	3. Vault 12

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Kunihiku Ikuhara, Naoko Takeuchi and the creative teams of Interplay, Obsidian and Bethesda.

(シーンブレイク)

 **Annulled Destiny II:  
Wild Wasteland**

 **Chapter 3,**  
 **Vault 12**

(シーンブレイク)

 _Fishing Boat was struck for 12 points of life  
(one of innumerable fan-translations of Fallout)  
Hint: look up "hooker" in any English-Russian dictionary published in USSR._·

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma leaned over the threshold as she surveyed the cavernously dark and damp room. There was some sort of upraised platform to the left, with guardrail along its edge. To the right from the entrance, a small flight of stairs was going up and forward, with an opened door right beyond it leading to a lit hallway. There was some sort of mechanism hanging down from the ceiling, a cross-breed of an jointed arm and a drilling machine attached to the rusty cog of the gate. It was long dead, judging by the water dripping rhythmically from torn cables. How could you make a place so soaked amidst a dry desert? Ranma shook flakes of rust off her left hand she used to hold at the edge of the cog-shaped opening.

"I do not read electromagnetic fields in this room," Ami confirmed her suspicions. "Even wiring is dead here. But look at this door design, it is just wrong! Why this inefficient shape? I'm not sure you can close it tight! And how could one make the door of a nuclear shelter open by moving _in_?！"

"You're right, Missy," Mike agreed. "It didn't close, all right. Otherwise the radiation wouldn't have gotten inside and we'd remained smoothskins, hek, hek, hek."

"Radiation?" Ranma narrowed her eyes.

Ami frowned as she adjusted something in her visor. Then she made a negative conclusion: "Everything decayed long ago, I'm watching constantly. 『You'll only get radiation poisoning if you start licking the walls or the ghouls.』

『Blarg!』 Reassured, Ranma moved towards the lit corridor, her bare feet stepping cautiously across the cold and slimy concrete of the stairs.

"We be thinking," Sulik noted thoughtfully as he stepped over the toothed threshold, "Travel long and wide, but entering a Vault first time."

Inside the Vault turned out to be quite unpresentable. There was a concrete corridor. A wide one. There were metallic doors. That part was not quite familiar as the doors were opening by sliding up. In the past tense as everything had rusted to complete immobility and even the button boxes beside the doors were gutted.

But that wasn't what was catching the eye. It was incredible amount of dirt mercifully shrouded in almost complete darkness... Until Sulik came along with his flare, casting the unsightly details into sharp highlight. Alas, the flare was long-running and the tribal wasn't feeling like just throwing a useful item away.

"And this is Doc in his infirmary," Mike presented in the voice of a tour guide as he pointed at a long window with rounded corners in the right wall. There was yet another ghoul visible beyond it. There were doctor's whites thrown over his shoulders that one could call white with a right amount of imagination. If one squinted. "Hi, Doc!"

"Hi yourself, senile old loon!" the other ghoul merrily called back as he hobbled towards the adjacent door. "Who did you bring? A whole crowd of smoothskins? They don't seem to look like traders."

"This is Vault Dweller's great-grandson," Mike presented.

"I am Narg," he offered with a white-toothed wide grin. "Glad to meet you."

"I—" Doc noticed Ranma in her micro-bikini and locked up mumbling something like " **very** smooth skins". Ranma belatedly shuffled to back ranks. "Erm, ahem, where are my manners! I am Doc. I patch the locals in case they need it." He wawed at a rusty surgical table in th dark as a cavern infirmary behind him. "But what, I beg to ask, brought the grandkid of such famous person into our humble underground?"

"We are searching for the Holy Thirteen," Narg explained showing the folded up suit. "To make a pilgrimage to the place of our ancestors!"

"Hmm, this is... So unexpected," Doc drawled casting side glances at Usagi. "Let's call Tim."

"I'd like to," Narg replied diplomatically. "Great-grandmother told much about him."

"Let me ring!" Mike offered as he pulled a weighty chunk of iron from a scrap heap in the corner. "You told it yourself that I am only good at bashing!" Walking up to a vent grate from which a pulsation of a faraway fan was echoing weakly, the ghoul started bashing it with all his might, hitting in a rhythm of sorts. In the enclosed space everyone's ears were hurting.

Finally Doc convinced the overly enthusiastic one to stop. A couple minutes passed in a ringing silence, then a husky voice reached from beyond the corner: "..won't do. As they were bashing, it's either Mike or an invasion, an' something tells me it's da first one. But again, there ain't no such thing as too much precaution. So—"

"Enough, enough, I got you," another voice replied as their owners emerged from beyond the corner.

The first one was a ghoul wearing glasses and a leather vest with many pockets, screwdrivers and other tools poking out of them. He had a huge clipboard on a strap over his shoulder, so that he could comfortably hold it with his left hand. There was a small dish-shaped mirror on his forehead, with a round hole in its center. That was all of note on him, because the second ghoul was much more attention-catching: there was a huge, glossy-black shotgun with a holed barrel cover hanging over his shoulder, a suspicious glare from under the lid of a worn and soiled helmet, a deceptively relaxed posture allowing him to throw the gun off his shoulder in a blink of an eye. In short, this one was serious. On top of that, there was a huge wrench hanging at his left side in a real baldric like that of a European sword, and a handgun holster at his right side. Ranma almost whistled appreciatively when she realized that his untucked shirt was masking a cuirass of sorts.

"Hmm, you don't look like traders," the bespectacled ghoul noted as he surveyed the outsiders with suspicion.

"We are pilgrims!" Narg proclaimed with too much drama as the suit unrolled down from his upraised hand. "Visiting the places of our esteemed grandmother's glory."

Ranma lifted a brow when she found that the ragged blue-and-yellow jumpsuit was woman's, for someone close to her height. What were these two thinking, dragging woman's clothing around and waving it like a flag?

"What, all six?" the bespectacled one asked, shocked, as he surveyed the girls.

"Naw," Narg waved that thought aside with exaggerated carelessness. "The grandkid is me. These for are just aliens tagging along."

"Aliens?" The ghoul blinked several times as he stared at the girls. Clean and beautiful, they were really looking as at home here as a rose growing out of a garbage pile. "Weeell... Glad to meet you, Mister, er..."

"Narg."

"Nice to meet you. Tim," the bespectacled ghoul offered. "I hope thi s not a portent of yet another end of the world..."

Narg just 'hmmph'ed.

"You believe them?" Doc was surprised. "Why?"

"I'd like to know that too," rasped the heavily armed one.

"It's too crazy to be a lie," Tim explained. Then his mouth stretched. It took for the girls a moment to realize it was his way of smiling. "Besides, I recognize this suit." He pointed with his finger. "A familiar patch on the side, we cut it from the sleeve of one of ours. And don't ask how many packs of Abraxio Cleaner it took to get all dried blood out. Nataly took a serious risk by helping us out while the survival of the Thirteen depended on her. Yeah... Plus the family resemblance."

"But aliens," rasped the heavily armed one.

"You see, Evan," Tim explained to him, "It's their family trait. Esteemed Nataly tended to be in the very eye of the hurricane. And the company following her was... matching. Lore is — pithy I did not see it myself — she walked out of the Cathedral in the compay of a Brotherhood paladin, a raider girl and an alien beast. In mirror shades on a background of the explosion they strode like true badasses they were. I don't know the percentage of truth in this."

"They fled from the Cathedral like bats out of hell, barely managing to find cover from the explosion," Narg corrected. "And Chomp-Chomp was just a mutated critter, a blind carnivorous rabbit or the like. Everything else is pure truth. Erm, I don't really know about mirror shades, to be honest."

"You see?" Tim told his fellows with triumph.

"Well, uh," Evan failed to object to that. Then he gathered his wits and found an actual topic: "About the aliens..." He glared at the four not-locals-at-all with suspicion.

"It's not that we have anything against you," Doc tried to smooth the edges, "But you should understand: the ill fame and all that."

The girls exchanged glances.

"Let M..Ami talk," Akane played it safe. 『In case they get me wrong...』

"Me learn now," Usagi added.

『I support this』," Ranma said as she thought self-critically that maybe, just maybe, they were a bit too hasty when decided to dive into this blindly. Should have at least matched what lies to tell.

"We are... superheroines from another world," Ami began. "Due to certain circumstances—"

"we're homeless orphans," Ranma cut it. "Cannot return... 『Don't look at me like that, it's pure truth.』

『Someone was going not to play openly?』 Akane inquired with sarcasm.

『Eh, we are up the creek without a paddle anyway,』 ranma waved her off.

"Due to certain circumstances beyond ur control," Ami continued, "we were stranded in this world, unable to return home." She paused to glance at her comrades. "Not knowing the day-to-day realities of this world, we decided to join Mister Narg, providing our abilities and technical knowledge in exchange for his knowledge of this world."

"So superheroines, eh?" Evan sounded skeptical.

"Does 'another world' mean another planet?" Tim asked to clarify. "Or another dimension? Or there was time travel involved?"

"Planet Earth of a parallel universe," Ami explained. "The very end of the twentieth century, so you can consider us having traveled two and a half centuries forward."

Tim 'hmmph'ed, deep in thought, and fell silent as he was clearly thinking of a next question to ask.

"I see that your costumes, err," Doc tried to break the lull in conversation, losing losing the track of thought for a moment when his eyes caught the redhead, "aren't your everyday garb. You probably have superhero names too, so that no one figures your secret identity?"

"We had," Ranma replied. "But we decided to play openly here. Use our real names. There is no need to... hide. I am Ranma."

『And that's all?』 Akane whispered worriedly.

『I noticed they don't use surnames here,』 she whispered back.

"Ami. Glad to meet you."

"Akane."

"Tsuki—"

『Backwards!』 Akane elbowed the Goth.

"Erm, Bunny," the black-clad girl offered suddenly translating her name literally.

"Tim, the boss of this bedlam," he offered in turn. "Glad to meet you."

"Evan," the weapon-laden ghoul offered curtly.

"If I may ask," Tim straightened his glasses, "how did you become superheroes? I never believed these comics about being bitten by a radioactive ant or green rocks from deep space, but... You see."

"By reincarnation," Ami explained. "Heritage of a lost supercivilization tied to your soul."

"Spiritualism?" Tim asked, doubtful. "Isn't that... against scientific principles?"

"Known as a confirmed fact," Ami explained, "with empirical description and lack of strict formulation, much less basic theory."

"So that's how it..." Tim mumbled, shocked.

"The acquaintance promises to be interesting," Doc drawled thoughtfully.

"Let's—" Narg piped in. "Argh, I don't do diplomatic. We need to know the location of the Holy Thirteen and we hoped someone would search it in the computers of the Twelfth before we go off exploring military bunkers."

"Well, I can run a search request right now," Tim replied with obvious reluctance as he held his huge clipboard with his left hand while using his right to... tap keys? "But we only keep utility databases in our working machines, stocking and accounting software. To search for pre-war exotics we'd have to go dig through holoarchives. Or worse, boot up the cold machines many of which were cannibalized long ago."

"We, kind of, can do service for service," Narg offered with fake cheer.

"Yeah, break someone skull," Sulik quipped. "They have their own pros, bro."

"Well, or bring something from far away," Narg reluctantly broadened the range of services. "We got a car."

"Weeell..." Tim paused, thinking. "Oh, well. Your great-grandmother saved us, let's count this as us returning the debt, he-he... But it will take a long time. I hope you got water on you?"

"We do, a little." Narg slapped a small blue canteen with number 13 on his belt. "Thank you."

"Don't thank us yet, there's a good chance we won't find anything," Tim warned. Then he noticed Ami's interest, she was actively scanning his gadget. "Pip-Boy 1040," he explained demonstrating his tablet computer the size of a large book. "A rugged piece of hardware but horribly weak, even compared to the 2000 model. I use it as a portable terminal." The screen was a narrow slit glowing orange, with only two lines of text fitting in it.

Ami, however, barely noticed his gesture, absorbed in scanning.

"Ferrite-core memory? So compact? Still, it's not even two kilobytes. And what's this...? Such a strange gas-discharge construct, forty legs, three discrete transistors per each. Why— Ah, based on gallium arsenide? It's a natural consequence. But even with automated assembly this circuit would cost— Wait, is this a processor?"

"This is your superpower?" Tim was amazed. "In just a few second grasping Pip-Boy schematics? Awesome!"

"It's just a part of my uniform," Ami explained with poorly hidden frustration. "Designed, alas, to work in conjunction with a computer I don't have anymore. I may be able to scan anything, but analyzing..." She let out a heavy sigh. Then added hastily: "But don't think that would prevent me finding hidden defects in mechanisms! I can compare reading from working specimens by eye..."

"Already talking up the price?" Mike piped in approvingly.

"Well, we have to find our place in this world," Ami got flustered.

"Hmm," Evan turned to Usagi. "And what your superpowers are, Miss Bunny?"

"Hack slash," the Goth replied rapping her blue-finished black tiara with her knuckle.

"She could exorcise demonic possession before," Ranma defended her friend. "and heal with light. But her boyfriend remained back there and she is grieving now. Lost her powers. A very tragic story."

"Toragic," Usagi echoed grimly.

"This world is like that," agreed Evan. "And you?"

"Total loss of superpowers." The redhead made a sour face. "But...!" She took a buffoonishly exaggerated stance on one foot, twisting her other leg and both her arms incredibly. "My Kung-fu mastery is still with me!"

Akane snorted with barely restrained laughter: the redhead's posture resembled more a statue of some dancing Hindu goddess than a real martial arts stance.

Evan lifted a brow as he turned his head to stare at her.

"Speed!" Akane proclaimed proudly. "There is no one faster than me... Also, banishing evil spirits a little..."

So, they kind of told everything about themselves, but nothing specific.

"Miss Ami," Tim offered suddenly. "Would you like to take a look at our computers? I think, with your help we'd also find the Thirteen faster."

"Gladly!" Ami perked up. "I've already noticed that the technologies of this world evolved in a... twisted, roundabout way. Enough to say, we had more compact and powerful computers than this one as far back as the end of the Twentieth century."

"Really?" Tim was surprised. "But it's impolite on my part to hold this conversation in a hall! Please follow me!"

Past rusty doors partially slid open, with a glimpse of yawning elevator shaft beyond, the procession of six outsiders and four ghouls descended stairs lit only by Sulik's flare.

Ranma noticed Evan surreptitiously shifting to back ranks, presumably for better control. Sshe whispered at him as she nodded at Usagi: "Watch her. Grieving, not looking where she goes. Wandered into rat lair one time."

He 'hmmph'ed approvingly and the redhead hurried to squeeze into the front ranks, close to Akane.

Four flights down the stairs ended in a cross corridor.

"The living level," Tim explained as he turned right.

Inside the Vault they were not using torches, any light was given off by scarce lamps making the underground feel like a cave of concrete and rusty iron. There were rows of doors to both sides, mostly open. The bright light of the flare was throwing rooms into momentary relief, some empty, some cluttered with unrecognizable junk. Beyond a dozen steps the corridor was shrouded in darkness. Then it began twisting and splitting. The rare lamps were cutting through the darkness without banishing it. From time to time there were round vent grates on the walls, groaning and rustling quietly, the weak air currents like touches of attention-starved ghosts. And the corridor was stretching on.

"It is very... empty here," Akane noticed, shivering, when he realized she couldn't remember the way back.

"The Vault was designed for a thousand people," Tim explained without turning. "Only a few became ghouls, most died by radiation poisoning. Then a fraction of the survivors gradually wandered off in search for more interesting life. And again, many ghouls from the Wasteland ended up here. We are... disliked in many places. Tolerated at best. But here we are all of a kin. It's safer and quieter here, very few people visit Necropolis. Even less manage to find our Twelfth."

Akane shuddered.

The Vault was breathing around them like a tomb not completely at rest. Yes, it was quiet here. But there was also darkness suffused with memory of hundreds of people who met their end in these steel caves. It would've been more fair if everything here was dead and forgotten. But life was still lingering — in the rusted machines, in the few dvellers who became creatures of nightmares.

"Don't worry," Ranma whispered to reassure her. "I remember all the turnd. Besides, Ami is recording—"

『I do not!』 the girl in question interrupted her. 『There's nowhere to. However effective the sensors, my visor is designed to work together with Mercury computer that is gone. Please don't make such assumptions anymore, it could cost us dearly.』

『That's a new one,』 the redhead said, taken aback. Then she tensed up. 『Do you feel that?』

Akane frowned as she prodded her ki senses. Usagi lifted a brow, this level was above her.

"There be voices," noted Sulik.

There are several... many ghouls to the right and, it seems, below us," Akane confirmed.

The corridor led to a big rectangular hall cluttered with round tables. The flare decided there was no better moment to burn out than right now. It sputtered and died. In the following darkness one could clearly see handrails on the backdrop of dim light coming from below: around a third of the hall was an empty space, with similar balcony on the other side as the one they found themselves on.

『It's their hangout here,』 Ranma commenter quietly as she leaned over the railing.

Others came closer to look as well. The multitude of ghouls below haven't noticed them yet. Some were sitting by round table, some were loitering around, one company was going at a card game with zest, surrounded by a sparce ring of gawkers. But most attention was attracted to a few persons who were..

"Wow, these ones are glowing!" Ranma voiced with awe.

..glowing slightly like they had greenish light bulbs inside them.

"Glowing Ones," Narg explained. "I heard about them but never saw one myself."

"That's because they absorb radiation well," Doc explaned like it was obvious. "So they have accumulated so much of it that they glow from inside. Keep clear of them, so much hard radiation is bad for smoothskins."

Ami emitted an unintelligible sound as she massaged the bridge of her nose wit two fingers. Then she grit her teeth and continued scanning with doubled vigor.

The targets of everyone's attention, meanwhile, kept calmly socializing with their non-glowing brethren. The glow was uneven, dull around the arms entwined by prominently opaque veins, brighter around the neck and collarbones. The same greenish light was coming from between their ribs making ghouls look like living X-ray photos. Ranma noted absently that muscles seemed to rather absorb light, visible as darker shadows. The faces of the Glowing Ones were barely glowing at all but were much uglier than these of common ghouls, more twisted and melty.

"Let's go," Tim touched Ami's shoulder making her jump then start apologizing profusely.

『So, yet again it doesn't come together?』 Ranma whispered compassionately.

Ami breathed noisily in and out forcing herself to stop and think: "At least this weeded out most of my initial assumptions," the girl genius said. "The Occam Razor didn't work, all I have left are either demonic contamination or gene modifications... I have to think this over."

"Demonic contamination?" Doc asked.

"I will... explain later," Ami replied. "When I understand it myself. My knowledge implies impossibility of the existence of ghouls, I'm trying to... find the missing factor. It's long to explain."

"Let's go," Tim repeated. "Meet the community. Lest rumors start circulating on their own."

"Yes!" Ranma agreed hastily, having first-hand knowledge about rumors running rampant among the classmates prone to making molehills into mountains, after which denying becoming exercise in futility. There's no stopping idiotic tales about yourself.

First Tim, then the girls, then the tribals followed by the three other ghouls descended to the main floor through a wide two-flight stairway leading down from the opposite corner of the balcony.

"A moment of attention please!" Tim raised his voice. The inhabitants of the Twelfth noticed the guests and raised a din that completely drowned their boss trying to make an announcement. Exclamations ranging from neutral like "lookit, smoothskins!" to borderline offensive were coming from all around. The ghouls began crowding to find what's the noise all about as the farther ones missed the opportunity to notice the relatively shorter girls, all they could see were two tribals' heads sticking above the crowd. The ghouls were speculating so loudly that any attempts on Tim's part to explain anything were useless. He was unable to raise his voice further. It seems, this was a common weakness of ghouls.

The situation was saved by Evan who made a mass announcement of a quite radical sort. He simply discharged his blue-finished monster into the ceiling. Akane managed to notice, at the edge of her perception, as the buckshot ricocheted into a potted plant fossil on the balcony above.

Everyone froze after the sudden thunderous discharge.

"Quiet, ya," Evan croaked menacingly. "Let the boss talk."

"As I was trying to explain—" Tim had a coughing fit. "We have guests today. Meet Narg, a grandson of the unforgettable Nataly. And those are superheroines from a parallel universe. I urge you to not crowd and not harass them with your questions. Rest assured, we will tell you everything in due time. Now excuse me, we have a business to attend. If someone needs me, ask in the terminal room." He headed through the hall towards one of the farther exits.

Yeah, riiight, Ranma thought as she, in a single side glance, observed the ghouls trail them like iron shavings a magnet.

After descending four more flights of stairs and walking down a short corridor, they found themselves at a dead end with two closed doors. One was blocking the corridor, it even had a small red light glowing emphasizing its locked status. The other one, set in the left wall, was rusty, sporting a lot of dents and an armored shutter welded into it crudely at the chest level.

"You can leave your guns in the armory," Tim suggested in an overly friendly voice as he gestured towards the side door.

Narg stared at him critically, one brow lifted. The ghoul's face remained impassive.

Not that he couldn't break him in half without any guns, thought Ranma.

"Why not," agreed Narg. Then he quipped, with one hand on his hip: "I have nothing to fear from such esteemed old gentlemen, haven't I?"

"Of course, of course!" Tony agreed, startled. "There is absolutely no need to— Ahem." He recovered fast. "You are truly the grandson. Besides..." His eyes flickered involuntary towards Ranma, which made him fluster and knock hastily on the armore shutter: "Hey, Grizzly! Open up! Griz, wake up, you cloth-ears!"

Akane watched this strange exchange with a puzzled expression. She glanced towards Ranma searching for support and whispered in her native tongue: 『I probably got them wrong?』

『you did not,』 the redhead whispered back. 『It's obvious they were checking back then if Narg's grandmother was hiding something under her clothing. I've been warning you: grandpa! But nooo, you had to stick with grandma, hadn't you?』

Akane blinked, uncomprehending. Then she realized that the ghouls eighty years ago were the same ones! Making a sharp one-eighty in her opinion on them, she glared fiercely. Some of them backed away. Her thoughts were occupied with how good would these perverts fly.

The shutter on the door slid aside with a shrill squeak. An especially ghoulish face could be seen beyond it, all covered with whitish scars and lit dimly from below for a better effect. "What'cha need?" barked the owner of this scary mug.

"Take the guns of our guests, Griz," Tony asked peacefully.

Narg and Sulik grinned as they handed him their hand-guns. The space before the door was suddenly crowded with just two of them.

"A Desert Eagle!" the unfriendly ghoul assessed as he took Narg's gun. Then he tsked approvingly at Sulik's weapon: "Ohhh a .223 revolver! A rare thing, the last time I saw one it was packed by that famous daredevil gal who saved us from the mutants. What was her name..."

"Nataly," Narg injected proudly. "I'm her great-grandson!"

"Glad ta meet'cha," the armory master gurgled. "Why are you here?" Judging by his voice he was either not glad at all, or just forgot how to express that emotion.

"We are searching for the location of the Thirteen," Narg repeated by route.

"Oh yeah?" Griz immediately grew focused and suspicious, showing that he was a veteran paranoiac. "Just like that, searching for it? Your own, howzit, holy place?"

"Well, we forgot," Narg reluctantly admitted.

"How could one forget that!" Griz snapped angrily.

"Hey, hey, chill," Narg tried calming him down. "Four generations have passed! Besides, the ancestors migrated five hundred miles away right after they came out. You know the wasteland. Venerating the old home was one thing, but there were no fools to just go visit it through all the critters, the territories of friendly neighborhood tribes and such. Then they made it a terrible secret, then old folks died out..."

"Drats, I keep forgetting how short-lived the smoothskins are," the ghoul grumbled. "People these days... But you should remember at least the general direction!"

"The general area, we know of," Narg said. "Somewhere in the mountains to the west of Shady Sands. Give or take fifteen miles. We'd comb that area and find it in a year or two if only we had time—" He fell silent realizing he blurted out too much. Then he continued in a tired voice: "We haven't got time left."

"Ah, to hell with you, go," Griz grumbled. Something buzzed, clicked, and the red light beside the door at the end of the corridor went off.

"Do not crowd the terminal room!" Tim said in a strict voice as he helped the squeaking door open by hand. The bottom, small part failed to retract into the floor. The ghouls followed the guests en masse stepping over it. It was clear that they will crowd, and how!

Beyond the door there was a cross corridor. To the right there was darkness piled up with some gutted mechanisms, a familiar long window with rounded corners discernible in the right wall. To the left there was an average sized hall with metallic desks holding ancient-looking computers. A couple was even working, their worn fans humming quietly.

Ranma prudently moved out of Ami's way while Akane dodged with sheer sped.

The unfamiliar looking desktops had the display and keyboard joined in a single body, like someone attached a shelf to an ancient TV. The metallic case noticeably narrowing towards the top was all rounded, like its designer hated right angles Even the transition from the face to the sloped keyboard shelf was smooth. The screen, rounded as well, felt disproportionally small taking no more than half the frontal surface.

Ami scanned it about ten seconds, understood its construction, got amazed at engineering ingenuity, got abhorred at the obsolete technologies. Tim, on his part, grew endeared with her ability to pick things apart.

Then Ami froze, frowned and admitted: "Now, my weakness. Without the ability to analyze, I can't understand the software."

"So, you can directly see the contents of the memory but cannot interpret it?" Tim clarified.

"Yes. The same as with the genetic code: I can browse the DNA sequence like an open book, but without hints from an expert system I can't even tell the human's own code from the junk introduced by viruses. The processors also work faster than my scanner can visualize."

"Let me show you how to operate a terminal from the user's standpoint," Tim offered.

Ami agreed and soon they delved technical depths. The keyboard proved to be familiar enough for Ami to imitate the sound of a woodpecker on steroids.

Doc, meanwhile was pestering Narg: he didn't forget the latter's slip about missing time. So he managed to pull the full story from the tribal, about dying crops, sick children and other disasters befalling the tribe that sent Narg on his quest.

Ranma missed most of it, busy with searchin for a solution to an unresolvable task of hiding from the ghouls staring at her at the same time as trying to keep the makeshift bikini from further shrinking due to bunching up all the while avoiding touching it.

Akane, on the other hand, paid attention. She thought it would be good to join the tribals as they were on a quest to save their tribe and not just adventuring. Heck, staying uninvolved would be unbecomingof a Sailor Senshi! She firmly decided what they will be doing. And if Ranma protests, she'd drag her spouse by the ears!

Usagi was standing in a corner hiding her total lack of understanding with forced gloom. The accursed, most disliked discipline reached even here like a hand from the depths of Hell erecting a wall between her and rear comrades, separating the talking ones from a mute and deaf one. Usagi wasn't going to give up, though. She flared up with grim determination. She'll show this language up...! A few ghouls staggered away as they noticed the black flame flickering in the Goth's eyes.

Doc, meanwhile, was going on and on on the topic of a healthy food.

"Everyone in our tribe knows that, even dumb ones," Narg wawed his rant aside. "The healtiest food is a rat fried whole, without skinning it. All microelements remain... But society cannot dawdle on the hunter-gatherer stage forever. Our tribe grew and that forced it to settle and farm."

"Just as I said!" Doc raised his index finger in triumph. "While at it you can't get by without the old world knowledge. All the tribes of the wasteland are in fact newborn, barely a hundred years old, without the accumulated experience and traditions the tribes of ancient times had. Without this knowledge, natural selection rears its ugly head!"

"We had that knowledge," Narg replied diplomatically. "Lots of it, on various things. We built a whole Temple of Knowledge for it. Kept it very well. For many years. There were special priests of knowledge. But one day their Pip-Boy simply didn't turn on. They couldn't repair it and they shied from telling the tribe. They started lying. At first they were good at bluffing because they memorized a lot. Then the old priests went to the ancestors, the young ones began mixing things up. The truth came out then. There was a big brawl, passionate and meaningless. My father finished breaking the Pip-Boy against the head priest's head. The head proved to be sturdier, he had told me, all solid bone."

"We be thinking it Temple of Trials in your tribe?" Sulik noted.

"Well, with knowledge gone the temple stood abandoned, ants made their nest in it," Narg explained. "Then kids began sneaking in to prove their bravery to each other. Until one got savaged to death. The Elder took things into her hands then. She declared the temple was for trials of young warriors, kids were spanked and forbidden to enter. Now the Arroyo tribe has a whole Temple of Trials unseen in any other tribes. A thing of pride." He wanted to spit but there was nowhere to in the crowd.

"Have you tried to find a replacement for your Pip-Boy?" Tim asked taking a break from teaching Ami as she had her clutches on a worn user manual at the moment, shoving tell-tale signs of speed reading. "I can't believe you don't have a pile holodisks left."

"Quiet," Narg tensed glancing at the gawkers all around. "That's a horrible secret, kind of."

"Ahem," Tim lowered his voice. "So why? I, for one, wouldn't be against bartering information. It happens we have nothing on agriculture."

"Because they are walled up," Narg grumbled.

"You no imagine how rare thing Pip-Boy be," Sulik explained. "We be seeing only two in entire life, one broken."

"But a desktop?" Tim wasn't giving up. "A common RobCo terminal?" He gestured at the computer Ami was working at.

"We'd need electricity," Narg began listing. "We'd need the warriors to bring it without smashing it on the way. The cattoh-de rain tube is a hellishly fragile thing. We need someone to teach us to use it, that is not easy, the town folks sneer at us."

"Maybe send someone smarter?" Sulik suggested as he got interested in the topic.

"Someone smarter got eaten," Narg explained briefly. "Wasteland is not for the weak."

"Send with warriors?" Sulik suggested with less confidence.

"Picking on the brainiac, warriors smashed the terminal," Narg admitted with a sigh.

"And—"

"And no one went for the third time. Are we a proud tribe or a band of comedians, to come for the third time to buy a computer? Besides, no one had use for that many hides. We had already crashed the market so hard it took several years for trade to recover."

No one had answer for that, so conversation just died down.

Ranma, meanwhile, was slowly drifting here and there not finding any reprieve from the curious ghouls attracted to staring at her barely covered body like flies to honey. She couldn't even punt without a more substantial reason: diplomacy was going well, a priceless happening in these part, it seems. But Ranma couldn't even inquire of Ami's success over the other girl's shoulder, she'd drag this crowd with her! Attempts of glaring were resulting in one specific ghoul suddenly remembering he had an urgent business somewhere else, or studying the ceiling innocently, or shifting back. All she managed was gawkers rotation.

Sulik kept watching her suffering with half-lidded stare until he finally concluded: "We be thinking your chosen clothing facilitates."

"I had no choice," Ranma grumbled in reply. "Powers lost, cannot transform, the suit will not appear." She shivered. "It's good Ami had unnecessary bow."

Narg involuntarily glanced at the other girls: "So what, you arrived into this world—" He stopped himself from saying the unadvisable word that could make the gawkers unnecessarily excited.

"Yes," the redhead admitted with reluctance. "Body being recreated by the mold of soul, kind of like that. Until we get local clothing the others will have to stay in... their superhero forms."

"I can lend you this... holy relic," Narg offered holding the folded up vault suit. "This way, there'd be some use for it, we have to drag it with us anyway. But if it gets damaged, repair it yourself."

"I can do that," the redhead replied gladly, pulling the suit on in half a second, faster even that any gawkers could grow disappointed. "A bit tight..." She made a couple test moves. "Funny, it's denim but it stretches!"

"I know no such word." Narg shrugged. "Old world fabric, that's all there to say."

"It's too tight in the chest," Ranma complained trying to straighten the stand-up collar that got bunched up years ago.

"You're lucky the great-grandmother had the same height as you," Narg replied. "And that her figure was similar. These suits were made by special machines, to fit personally."

"It's some century and a half since we picked that extruder for spare part," someone commented from the crowd showing that no, the attention haven't lessened. Ranma waved aside a couple comments of it suiting her, thought of unzipping the top making a small cleavage of thirty or so centimeters... Then decided wisely that she'd better endure.

The suit was snug but, luckily, not skin-tight. It was even a bit baggy in the shoulders - probably, remains of former shoulder-pads. The redhead inconspicuously looked herself over. The suit had the texture of worn denim, scuffed in many places, with small holes and larger patched tears. The color proved to be stronger than the fabric, still vibrant except totally worn out places like the knees. There was a yellow stripe of outwardly the same fabric hugging the waist, playing the role of elastic belt. Amazingly, it haven't stretched in how many years — eighty or so — still taut. A strip of the same yellow color was going from the waist to the neck hiding a steel zipper. Ranma realized with some surprise that the suit was designed to hug each breast separately, with the yellow strip running flat against her breastbone. The fabric was given form without using seams. An amazing, impressive design, practically a built-in sports bra, but it was _definitely_ ·not her size.

Ami, meanwhile, has mastered the user mode. The process itself proved laughably easy with her power of observation, but one line on the screen attracted her attention: "Copyright RobCo Industries, 2075/77... An interesting coincidence, it's almost precisely a century of difference. It's undeniable proof of that system's influence, such things do not happen naturally."

"A century?" asked Tim.

"A glaringly obvious dead end of technical evolution," Ami explained hastily to distract from her slip. She wasn't going to tell anyone about the Ahs system and its disastrous influence on this world's evolution. "In our world, such performance at this size corresponds to... the 70s of the 20th century. As far as I remember, there was such a famous microchip, Z80. But we had... a scalable technology chosen and towards my time, mid-90s, the power of personal computers increased approximately sixteen times. But here we have a... hard cap. Not gas-discharge logic matrices, nor transistors based on Gallium Arsenide could be miniaturized any further. They'd have to begin from scratch to move forward.

"Every terminal having a whole megabyte of memory?" Tim was awed. "In only twenty years...?"

"And that was far from the limit," Ami said, "the widespread technology having only realized a tiny fraction of its true potential. If I live that long, I'd have to recreate... Oh, sorry...! The basic principle is simple, creating circuits via photolitography on the surface of a silicon crystal."

"Hm, it probably has lots of engineering problems." Tim straightened his glasses, deep in thought. "As in any serious enterprise. But... Photolitography means projection? The trick is in reduction, right?

"Yes, miniaturization is only limited by the size of atoms and quantum effects," confirmed Ami.

"I too hope very much I live to see that moment," Tim said sincerely. "Our longevity has its uses."

"But you have a relatively powerful computer of your own. As far as I can see, this mainframe over there," She pointed into a wall behind the terminal, "Is at least two magnitudes more powerful than the terminals. I wonder if—"

"I had to expect you seeing through the walls." Tim sighed.

"Well... In short, I do," Ami admitted sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I got carried away..."

"Very strong superhero mojo," commented Sulik.

"It's a day of disclosed secrets." Tim sighed. "All right, but only this time. Don't spread this." He briskly went towards the exit.

"My lips are sealed!" Narg reassured him.

"Believe me, we can keep secrets," added Ami.

『Found something interesting?』 Ranma asked her quietly in their native tongue.

"Please speak so that everyone understands," Ami berated her in English. "This is matter of trust."

Ranma only sounded an irritated 'Che!'. Diplomacy was so troublesome!

"Griz... Hey, Griz," Tim's voice reached from the corridor, accompabied with banging against the steel door. The unfriendly ghoul replied, then they two squabbled for a bit in hushed tones. Then the ghoul leader returned. "A moment, he'll open it."

There was squeal of metal and the back wall shuddered throwing off clouds of rust. With loud squeals and with strained whirring it began retracting into the floor but stuck leaving a gap of some thirty centimeters. There was stench of burned insulation.

"Bloody pile of scrap!" Tim commented with feeling, making Akane doubt if she understood him correctly. What blood had to do with this? "It'll take a whole day now!"

"Let me help," Ranma offered jumping up and grabbing the edge. Then she froze. "Err, will this mechanism break if I open it by hands?"

"You can't do any worse," Tim replied. "But you need a sledge."

"Let's see" said the redhead shifting her hands wider to place her feet against the ceiling. Shouting in Japanese 『Hey-Ho!』 she straightened with all her strength. The wall moved down with rusty squeal, then jammed — the redhead froze in the pose of Atlas supporting the sky, only upside down — then crashed down making the floor shudder. Ranma elegantly tumbled landing on her feet.

"And you call that simply 'Kung-Fu'?" someone commented from back ranks, probably Evan.

"I was training since I was two years old," the redhead bragged. Then she barely dodged Ami.

(シーンブレイク)

January 08, 2016. Translated may 05, 2016.


	4. Skeletons in Cupboards

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Kunihiku Ikuhara, Naoko Takeuchi and the creative teams of Interplay, Obsidian and Bethesda.

(シーンブレイク)

 **Annulled Destiny II:**  
 **Wild Wasteland**

A reminder: Japanese speech is delineated using 『Japanese double quotation marks』

 **Chapter 4,**  
 **Skeletons in Cupboards**

(シーンブレイク)

 _Optimist studies English, pessimist studies Chinese, realist studies Kalashnikov  
(Russian folk wisdom)_·

(シーンブレイク)

The air in there was warm, dry and stale. The revealed room was about thrice as large as the first one, elongated and noticeably less rusty. Right beyond the faux wall there was a wide, waist-high rise shaped like a truncated metallic cone. The side walls of the room were lined by tables with terminals on them, intermixed with various tech-looking boxes with blinking lights, huge reels of tape beyond glass doors and other such things.

Ami beelined towards a huge computer towering at the back wall like a round-edged two-meter cube glowing red with panels of tiny lights, a small screen in the center looking disproportionally small.

"What is this?" Akane was eying the cone-shaped construct suspiciously. There was empty space inside, occupied by an ergonomic chair. A wooden tabletop was running in semi-circle along the top, cluttered with various electronic innards. And, like a cherry on top, a brutal looking solder on its support. "A table? But why in such shape, you can only reach it from inside."

"Must be for the big boss," Ranma concluded as she boldly sat down in the chair. Its back consisted of several horizontal bars clad in artificial letter. "So that no one else is pawing his papers or something." She tried spinning on the chair. It emitted an unoiled squeal.

"This is the Overseer seat," Narg explained. "But legends say that the Twelfth is an unusual Vault, having no Overseer seat."

"We ourselves discovered this secret not long ago," Tim admitted. "Well after the exodus and re-settling. Long after Nataly visited us."

"We be thinking, does it have machineguns like that one in the Thirteen?" Sulik mused out loud.

"Machine-guns?" Tim asked, surprised.

"The den rises baring a surprise for attackers," Narg confirmed. "I never understood what does that mean, but if the ancestors were calling this table 'den', it means it should be able to rise. Not the chair, for sure."

"There should be a button?" Ranma bent down ducking under the table top in curiosity.

『No, you won't!』 Akane barked forgetting to speak in English. 『What if it shoots?』 Nimbly jumping up onto the tabletop she pulled Ranma back up by the pigtail.

"Careful!" Tim exclaimed. "Some of these parts are unique!"

"I'm sorry!" Akane squeaked. Glancing at a big valve, densely packed with tiny innards, that she had almost stepped on, she got off the table slowly and deliberately.

『I wasn't going to push!』 the redhead retorted, deeply offended, as she made a point of standing up. 『Who are you taking me for?』 She walked away into a corner to pout.

"Never the less..." Tim glanced at the sheepish Akane, then by some reason at Usagi. The goth girl replied with a nervous 'victory' gesture. "Never the less, an extra machinegun would never hurt. Joe-the-Green! Sebastian! Get over here with tools!"

They did not have to wait long because at that point, it seems, the entire modest population of the Vault was crowding the room. Two ghouls with pliers fell on the Overseer seat like locusts. First they wrenched the chair out as it was getting in their way. Then Tim had to hurry saving the electronics piled on the table from being too close to more and more heavy tools as the ghouls switched from pliers to hammer and crowbar. Then they volunteered Narg and Sulik when the wiry but thin ghouls proved not mighty enough to tear something off.

For several minutes everyone was busy. Ami was working her magic on the mainframe making it beep from time to time. Tim was replacing the electronic parts in table drawers. The tribals and the techies were trying to tear something off without twisting the crowbar in the process. Ranma stopped pouting and was watching their struggle with interest. Something was cracking, metal creaking, but there was no discernible result yet. Then Mike came with a sledgehammer. They didn't trust the delicate work to him, took the sledge from him and used it themselves. Against such argument even the sturdy pre-war construction had nothing to say. Soon, the two ghoul mechanics were picking at the table's innards. They exclaimed in joy as they found something that made them bring a cable they then spent a long time attaching to somewhere inside the table, swearing. Suddenly, there was sparkling, an electic motor whirred loudly and the entire table jumped up like a Jack-in-the-box rising some meter and a half on a thick column. It now resembled a mushroom.

Two six-barreled machine-guns lowered down from under the mushroom cap, pointed at the crowd of onlookers in the first room. The barrels began spinning up. The gawkers displayed excellent reflexes by jumping toward the walls. Akane stuck to the ceiling. Ranma was on the other side. Only Usagi froze like deer in headlights.

『Dodge, you fool!』 Ranma yelled at her.

"Shut it down!" Tim hissed.

The mechanics fumbled in their haste.

Grabbing the cable, Sulik heaved. Lighting the sudden darkness up with its sparkling end, the cable tore from the table innards. There was dying whirring of the slowing barrels, a couple seconds of silence, then first nervous laughs of relief were sounding. The darkness was far from complete, there were screens glowing along the walls, multitudes of orange lights blinking, the mainframe was glowing with its crimson panels. There was also dim light reaching from the corridor.

"Folk wisdom sez:" Sulik declared in wise voice, "for electreecitee to die, tear the wire!"

"Excuse me, did I miss something?" Ami asked worriedly.

Ranma snorted suppressing a laugh.

『Nothing special,』 Usagi reassured her. 『Just the locals discovering an interesting secret... And fate reminding me to be careful with my wishes.』 Her voice was full of dry humor. 『The outcome could've been very funny, to think of it.』

"With your wishes?" Ami asked, not understanding.

"Don't get distracted," Ranma distracted her. "Keep working, they'll repair lights any moment now."

Akane cast a worried glance at Usagi. Considering _what_ ·the Goth Senshi was wishing only a couple hours ago — namely, to lie down and die quietly — such gallows humor was quite worrying.

Tim, meanwhile, was dressing the two unlucky mechanics down in a whisper. It looked like they were finding excuses. The ghouls' whisper was husky and Tim's monologue so fast and furious than neither Ranma nor Akane recognized anything.

The light was back in two minutes. The crowding ghouls began examining the six-barreled monsters letting out appreciative whistles.

『They are so glad,』 Usagi noted in Japanese. 『Are these that valuable?』

"Useful things?" Ranma asked addressing the community in general: Tim was too busy.

"Why, these are miniguns!" one of the Glowing Ones replied. "If we sell them at the bazaar, it's five thousand caps for each!"

"We won't be selling them," another ghoul retorted. "We'll put them n the corridor near the entrance, it would be a surprise sentry post for attackers!" He had a creaking fit of coughing or maybe laughter.

 _Mini_ ·guns? Ranma thought. I'm missing something here.

"We'll sell the second one anyway!" the first Glowing One disagreed. "Just think how much goodies we can barter for it!" He rolled his eyes dreamily.

"And where are you planning to get spare parts for repairs?" the second ghoul wasn't giving up. "Filing 'em by hand from raw chunks of metal? All for some puny five grands? What are you planning to do with these? Go chasing girls in Reno? Those folks would quickly put you six feet under!"

『They are discussing if they should sell it or hoard it,』 Ranma translated for Usagi.

The mechanics, meanwhile, fell on the exposed, defenseless column with screwdrivers to begin quickly reducing it into a pile of parts. This process was accompanied with esoteric exclamations like "Oooh, this collector! The collector!", "Just look at this baby! It even has factory grease left!" and "The worm gear drive is meh." For Akane they looked like vultures cleaning a cattle carcass. This wasn't far from truth: soon there was only a bare frame left of the Overseer seat while the sated techies waddled away carrying big piles of parts. Tim could not spare any time for the guests: he was too busy making sure the less talented representatives of the ghoul kin do not drop the machineguns on the way to the armory and do not pocket the ammo.

Is short it was a merry madhouse.

Ami, it seems, never noticed any of that, busy staring at something inside the mainframe. Shifting to one of the terminal tables absent-mindedly like a sleepwalker, she found some cable in its drawer without looking and connected the terminal to the mainframe. After wich she dove into the terminal, unaware of anything around her, typing on the archaic-looking keyboard with her left hand and tinkering with her wisor with her right.

Ranma approached to look over her shoulder. There were columns of numbers and symbols flickering on the screen. She moved away quietly to avoid distracting Ami.

Tim, meanwhile, was explaining finer points of prospector craft to the tribals: "You should be searching not for a cave, but for traces of construction work. Any Vault does have a concealed navel point, a tunnel from which digging was started. And a road to bring in construction supplies and remove mined rock. Construction of such scales is impossible to conceal completely, so how do you think it is concealed? Thus, that navel point is camouflaged as a minor military installation. Unimportant enough that enemies wouldn't waste a nuke on it and remote enough for the Vault to survive if the nuke is dropped anyway."

"You be saying we must search for a petty pre-war military bunker," Sulik asked, "with traces of big digging?"

"Exactly," Tim confirmed. "But the traces of digging will be thoroughly camouflaged. As an underground hangar or a foundation bank for a shed, or whatever the old world people had imagination for. The Thirteen will be around half a mile away from that. Most probably on the other side of some ridge.

Both tribals sighed.

"Won't do," Narg said. "To succeed, one has to... read these ruins like we read animal tracks. Me and Sulik would do no better than a Vault City citizen trying to hunt geckos."

"I can help!" Ami piped in, raising her head from her work. "I cant detect underground hollows—"

『Don't get distracted!』 Ranma berated her. 『That will be our plan B! Do you realize how much you'd have to comb?』

"No less than a thousand square kilometers." Ami wilted a bit. "All right, all right. I almost figured this out..." Judiging by frustration in her voice, she got stuck at something, with that 'almost' threatening to stretch into a couple hours.

"There is something troubling you?" Tim asked diplomatically.

"This battery of analog to digital converters here," Ami explained pointing at the back of the mainframe. "It has multitude of cables attached, it's obviously some sort of sensor grid. The program processing its input is extremely tangled, I couldn't figure out its purpose. But it's this program that has highest priority, currently taking up eight cores out of nine surviving. Initially, when there were sixteen of them, it should have been less noticeable, but now one core carries out practically all system tasks including interrupt processing. While this ADC alone generates three hundred thousand interrupts per second."

"You mean," Tim said, squinting, "that our mainframe is so slow not because it is a rusty, worn out pile of scrap but because it is busy with some, pardon me, fucking nonsense?"

"Umm, I'm sorry?" Ami grew confused. "But this process processes data from a sensor grid—"

"Which we had no idea existed," Tim cut her off. "Meaning either these sensors had croaked long ago, or it is calculating some nonsense like number of rats in the desert, or checking if Chinese bombers fly overhead. Shut that process the fuck down...! Pardon me, Miss."

"Are you sure?" Ami hesitated. "I wouldn't want breaking something vital. Like nuclear reactor control."

"Nuclear?" Tim asked, clearly confused. "You probably mean a _fission_ ·reactor? No, there is no such thing in our Vault, only standard fusion generators. That are completely self-sufficient, I dare say."

"Fusion means thermonuclear," Ami replied. "Do these it have their own computers?"

"No, no!" Tim corrected her. "Not 'thermo'. Just your everyday cold fusion. There is no need for a computer there, their design isn't more complex than a common fusion battery."

"Cold fusion?" Ami asked, shocked. "But it's... How could it... It's impossible! Even the Silver Millennium science..."

"Impossible?" It was Tim's turn to be confused. "But they were using such batteries in the thousands before the war!" He turned to the crowd of gawkers: "Hey, someone go to Griz and grab me a fusion battery."

The crowd let out a collective groan and began drawing straws: ostensibly, to make Griz part with that battery was a task not for the faint of heart.

『Something impossible again?』 Ranma intruded in on Ami, grinning. 『Come on, brace up. This lost look is so not you.』

Ami grared at the redhead sharply, a heated retort on the tip of her tongue. But she thought better.

『If I made a lost puppy imitation each time I encounter a new screwy martial arts style...』 Ranma provided an example, leaving her phrase pointedly unfinished.

『A martial art style...?』 Ami frowned. "But that's... You are right!" She continued with palpable relief as she obviously thought of something. "Yes, right! There are no perfect truths in science, all too often practical applications stay undiscovered or rejected for decades if not centuries. The scientific community could be as short-sighted and set in their ways as the regular people. Take, for example, Helicobacter pylori accepted only a century and eight years after its discovery. People conducting experiments could err as well, resulting in an idea being rejected as contradicting reason.(note 1) Maybe it's the same with the cold fusion...? I wouldn't want this world to have different laws of physics."

Meanwhile, swearing echoed from the corridor. The squabble between the ghoul sent there and the unfriendly stock-keeper could be heard even from this distance. Tim apologized as he went to resolve the situation.

While waiting for him to return, Ami was browsing something lazily on the screen. She then peered closer, frowned and began browsing quickly, purposefully.

Ranma leaned over her shoulder. To the left, there were two tidy columns of numbers and letters divided to smaller, two-character columns. To the right, there was a thinner column filled with a mess of symbols with English words embedded in it, wrapped to the next line strictly on the column's boundary. Ami stopped browsing and Ranma squinted at the right column, reading the compressed text: "Chinese bombs shoot this processor the fuck down pardon missing... What is this crap?"

"Right!" Ami exclaimed. "Speech recognition! That's what the mysterious process eating up the computation power is!"

"Speech recognition?" Ranma asked, puzzled.

"That's no sensor grid!" Ami explained. "These are hidden surveillance microphones! While the speech recognition serves for compressing the information: recording sound from how many... ah, one thousand twenty four channels is too much for any tape. So they resolved this by using speech recognition and recording the resulting text. It's very compact but partly messed up. 'Bombers' turned into 'bombs', 'shut ' into 'shoot' and 'Miss' into 'missing'." She looked at the leftt columns. "It's strange, the earlier part of our conversation is missing. It's like recording started from the word 'Chinese'."

"Nothing surprising!" Tim's voice reached from begind them making Ami start. "It most probably does have a list of key words to detect seditious topics. The magnificent bastards!" He put a heavy, rounded cylinder the size of a soda can on the table next to the terminal. "Let us try finding where this big brother was tattling to. I wouldn't want to find the hard way that there is a bunker with a terminal that lets read all our talks. It's a severe security breach!"

Both began picking through mainframe's memory even as Ami kept glancing towards the cylinder, curiosity gnawing at her.

Ranma walked away to not distract them.

『What did they find?』 Akane asked her in a hushed voice in their native tongue.

『A clever surveillance system listening the entire Vault,』 Ranma replied as quietly. 『It's still working.』

Akane frowned: 『How much was that boss of theirs mistrusting his own people if he made that. And put machine-guns under his table too, the paranoiac. This feels so filthy.』

『All of that was factory-made,』 Ranma corrected her glancing at the gutted table. 『A single paranoiac couldn't have done it himself.』

『A happy world wouldn't have blew itself up,』 Usagi concluded philosophically.

Ami and Tim were done with the mainframe in a quarter an hour, amputating several extra parts when it refused to boot up without the surveillance module. Then Tim was running tests, awed at the freebie computation power. Then she was scanning the dead cores marking intact parts. It was looking promising, Tim could probably assemble two working ones from these seven.

Finally Ami could run a keyword search after she, in only five minutes, wrote a program that made the tape drive work five times faster than was considered possible. Two boxes at the back wall were whirring and whispering as they wound thick, plate-sized spools of magnetic tape. The mainframe cores freed from their big brother job were processing unfiltered signal directly from the reading heads, five times faster than the dedicated tape drive controller could.

Now she could focus her attention on the thing making her curiosity burn. Tim had called it a 'microfusion cell'. The heavy, rounded cylinder had a safe connector protected by a shutter. Not surprising, considering the label '1040,8 Volts DC'.

"I'm intrigued myself," Tim said. "maybe you'd find something new here as well."

"So..." Ami was turning the cell in her left hand manipulating her visor with her right through the earring. "In the center we have... I think it's a capacitor. Thin like a pencil. Around it, in rings, a voltaic pile of thin-film cells. Exactly nine hundred. Deuterium, Palladium, Osmium. That's strange. Our people tried that, it worked no better than a perpetuum mobile. A jacket of paraffin and lead. Quite expected. Hmm... Such interesting plastic. No wonder it's still intact after so many years. Rings of the same plastic along the outer and inner edges for insulation between... Wait, stop. There's too little Palladium, it couldn't absorb even a thousandth of Deuterium present. Deiterium is there in heavy water form. So this ring is to keep the water inside the cell...? Then what Palladium is for...? A suspension of nanoparticles in heavy water. I don't get it. And Osmium...? A coating on the top membrane of the cell? And what's this...? Traces of mechanical wear? From what...? Now, what do we have at the butt-ends. Aha, a complex controlling mechanism at the top. Such an impressive transistor...! Next, the bottom end. Such recless design is a crime against safety! A tiny radioisotope cell outside the protective jackets, could be destroyed from a simple dent in the casing! And who was the bright mind to choose Cesium for it? Recycling such batteries should have been be a nightmare. Hm... But they'd died long ago otherwise. Now, what else do we have here? Piezoelements...? And a lot of transistors for them. So then the main battery is ultrasonic-activated...? But how would that help...? maybe cavitation at the surface nanostructures of the Osmium film?"

"Well?" Ranma inquired: for her, all that rubbish, said in English at that, had been nonsensical, utterly out of her grasp. "Is there progress or is it eating your brain?"

"That was more than I knew about the microfusion cells," Tim admitted. "They don't tell such things in books: the blasted commercial secrets. While disassembling is fraught with terrible explosions."

"Explosions?" Ami asked in surprise. "But there's nothing in there that could..." She frowned fingering her earring. There were tables and graphs flickering across her visor. "I see... No, wait... Photonium...?" Her features reflected utter disbelief. Then she narrowed her eyes, her movements growing calm and collected. "That explains much, then... But how did they... _Charged_ ·Photonium...? Oh, of course. If they copied the standard schematics turning it on its head... Yes, looks like it." She kept studying the cell for a while, then handed it back to Tim. "Thank you, now many things are clear."

Ami did shrink when she noticed everyone's intense attention focused on her.

"Excuse me, but what exactly is clear?" Tim voiced everyone's curiosity.

"Umm," Ami mumbled sheepishly as she realized how much her disjointed rambling must have intrigued them. "You see, the technology employed here couldn't be local... I mean, from Earth. This doesn't look like natural development. It's like the creators of this battery had a standard Tantrium cell from the Silver Millennium tech base on their hands. They then re-created its crude copy using the 22nd century tech base."

"You say they got their paws on alien tech?" Ranma asked.

"That, or they had a Silver Millennium relic," Ami replied. "This is either a proof that Moon Kingdom existed in this world or that humans are not alone in this galaxy. Considering that hyperwave echo..." Turning to face Tim, she explained it for him: "The central pencil-sized part is a Photonium accumulator obviously copied from the output cascade of a Tantrium battery and then merely lineraly resized. Here, at the side," She pinted at the top of the cell, "they squeezed in a crude and low-power Photonium generator, at most one or two Kilowatts. But the accumulator capacity is increased by several orders of magnitude. It can store up to, uhh, almost a hundred Megajoules."

"A hundred and sixty," Tim corrected.

"Err, one hundred sixty Megajoules," Ami echoed. "Such increase of capacity at the cost of reliability is appaling, this energy is equivalent to forty kilograms in Trinitrotoluene!"

Most ghouls, as well as Ranma and Akane, took a step back from Tim holding the cell.

"Don't worry, the accumulator is almost empty!" Ami hurriedly reassured them. "To initiate recharging cycle, you have to place a strong magnet against this yellow circle here at the bottom. Then this... ultrasonic-initiated cold fusion voltaic pile would completely recharge the accumulator in 24 hours."

Tim was silent for a while as he digested the information. Then he asked slowly: "You mean these cells... They are rechargeable?"

"Definitely," Ami confirmed. "I can't tell for sure but I think they should survive from twenty to a hundred cycles. The accumulator, by its very nature, could last for near eternity, but the generator and the voltaic pile do not. Thus, recharge cycles would be getting progressively longer. Judging by minor wear, this battery had been recharged a few times."

"Bloody hell!" Narg commented, face-palming by some reason.

"You be living, you be learning," Sulik consoled him philosophically.

"Everyone, you got it?" Tim growled addressing his fellow ghouls. "You heard nothing! And if you find a discharged microfusion cell, you grab it simply because you're that bad a scrounger, nothing more!"

The ghouls cackled en masse rubbing their hands.

"I collect them in loving memory of my deceased grandmother!" some wannabe comedian injected from the back ranks.

"And I want to collect a thousand to build a power plant in my garage!" another added.

"Excuse me...?" Ami said in puzzlement.

"Am I thinking correctly that common knowledge is that the cells are _not_ ·rechargeable?" Ranma inquired innocently.

"Definitely," Tim replied. "Now, if you'd be so kind to not proliferate this, ahem, priceless knowledge..."

"We have no need," Sulik reassured him. Then he took an exaggerated thinking stance. "Well, if for us and Narg personally... But are we having any need?"

"Highwayman!" Narg reminded him. "It guzzles them like Hakunin ratburgers. Aww, why oh why did I throw it away yesterday!" He shook his head ruefully.

『What's with them?』 Akane asked Ranma in a whisper: while her English was more book-smart than redhead's, her lack of real practice left her lost in this pile-up of hints and omissions.

『They will be having hefty profits with these cells,』 Ranma explained, whispering as well. 『Everyone thinks these cells are one-use and throw them away, but they are rechargeable.』

"By the way," Tim asked Ami, "what is Photonium?"

"It's a kind of matter that consists of photons forming a stable crystalline lattice," the girl genius explained gladly. "Generating devices are simple but the theory behind them is not. It's extremely complex computationally. Natural progression of earth science and technology gives access to hard light around the twenty sixth century. There are... self-strengthening hard light structures used in the accumulator of this battery, otherwise such energy density would've been unattainable. The design is pure aping, copied without understanding the math behind it. Otherwise why make the accumulator so long and thin? No, they obviously took an existing design and just added more layers. More so because _charged_ ·photonium requires much higher level of understanding and matter manipulation.

"Fantastic!" Tim was awed. "I'm so glad I met you. Who would have thought that things so common could have such skeletons in their cupboards!"

A bout of awkward mutual praising followed, coupled with a brief educational-level review of the twenty sixth century science. To be honest, Ami knew most of these matters on the educational level herself, without unnecessary detail. She had been vary to ask the pink-haired time traveler too much lest the timeline tangles into an even worse knot. Her knowledge of spatial physics and her ability to make portals were Ami's own research, based on object lessons provided by the Dark Kingdom generals and cultists of the eldritch Pharaoh Ninety.

Tim never asked about some things he was acutely curious about, Ranma noted. Namely, their Senshi powers and how twentieth century girls could know twenty-sixht century tech.

When the mutual praising lost its steam and Tim had to deal with the crowd that grew too rowdy without supervision, Ranma quietly shuffled to Ami's side to support her with a talk.

『Sooo, how's this world?』 the redhead inquired in a whisper. 『The distorted evolution... Dang it, I meant the effect of 'a tree that hit a glass ceiling'.』

『Everything around is simply _made_ ·from that distortion!』 Ami whispered back. 『First, and most noticeable, they knew how to make transistors. Very good transistors. But the microchip was never invented. Instead, their computers are based on insane gas discharge and capacitor matrices animaded by a scanning electron beam. In fact, every 'valve' in such computer is a microchip equivalent with thousands of active elements. It works, and works well. But it cannot be miniaturized further! A dead end. The mainframe is much more powerful but it's built on entirely different principles. It has three-dimensional grids of ultra-miniaturized valves, two thousand ninety per one vacuum envelope. It's very reliable and time-proof but I fear to think how high the production cost was. Assembling each multi-valve requires lots of manual labor and there are thousands of them in the mainframe. Only to achieve computational power on par with some personal computers back home... A dead end again. To step further they'd have to invent something entirely different from scratch!』

『I see. They kept inventing the wheel. Any practical advices?』 Ranma asked her.

『Don't grow complacent. This world's science could have had breakthroughs in utterly unexpected fields, that's not counting the obvious alien influence. Many things could be not what they seem. Like the seeming likeness of these processors to simple valves.』

『I got it.』 Ranma nodded severely.

Then, finally, the mainframe finished abusing the tape drive. With a grumpy click the spool began winding back while Ami dove into search results saved on the terminal's holodisk.

Long, boring picking through notes for thirteennth days of month, through orders for thirteen pieces and other such junk only resulted in a short adrvertising text.

After reading how wonderful a Vault the Thirteen is, placed so conveniently under the downtown of Bakersfield, Narg grew sullen: "Bullshit."

" _Bovine... feces_?" Akane echoed.

"Well, Bakersfield is to the west from here while the Thirteen is somewhere north-east," Narg explained. "Pure bullshit."

"There be long word 'disinformation'", Sulik injected.

"But why lie about the location of the Thirteen?" Narg was grieving. "Nobody tried to hide the Twelfth! Neither the Fifteenth!"

"I can't figure out why," Tim replied. "Memories fade with time, but there was never a case of a Vault location being secret. 12th in Barstow, 21st and 34th in Vegas, 92nd, 101st and 112nd in the Capital, 114th in Boston... Heh, I haven't forgot it yet! But I, until your ancestor's visit, was sure that 13th is in Bakersfield, where Broterhood den is now."

"The brotherhood decayed," Narg shared bitterly. "In that Maxxson of theirs, even on the streets—"

"There is... table of other color," Ranma attracted their attention, standing on tip-toes to survey the tabletop of the still raised Overseer seat. "There was a terminal?"

Truly to her word, the tabletop was discolored slightly less at one spot.

"There was, but it's broken," Tim explained pointing at one of the non-working computers in the terminal room. "It was dumb, without a data storage, but its networking chip is fried. We keep it for spares."

"Let's see." Ami walked to that terminal meandering through the crowd to scan it. "Aha!" she exclaimed victoriously, perking up as she turned the massive desktop onto its side as easily as if it was light like a feather. Pulling one of the screws in the bottom out with her two fingers, she turned it with a click then pushed it back in. "A breaker in the power circuit of a holodisk," she explained to the stunned spectators, "concealed in the bottom part of the chassis."

Pleased, Tim hurried to plug the terminal to a wall outlet. Soon it woke to life rustling its holodisk. Glowing boot lines faded in slowly on the screen. Then a password prompt emerged.

Tim immediately turned this into a terminal hacking practice for Ami. Judging by agitation and crowding of all other ghouls around, the chance to observe such skill in use were rare indeed. "Memorize the key sequence," Tim was explaining. "Hold AR2 at boot, when input prompt appears, press F8 without releasing AR2."

"Hmm," Ami did as instructed. "It looks like the usual debugging mode. What is the difference?"

"It starts before the shell," Tim explained. "The password protection is implemented at the shell level. Now memorize the name of the swap file. Have you opened it...? Now the main trick. The authentication subroutine always uses the same virtual memory page. You locate it like this... And voila. It's taking just one screen, filled with garbage and somewhere inside lies the unencrypted password."

Ami frowned as she read words scattered among a mess of random characters.

"I know, I know," Tim agreed. "The hole is just horrible! But there were few in the old world who knew about this. Yours truly was one of the rare privy people. The knowledge itself was considered seditious while distributing it was treated as an act of terrorism."

"Why haven't they just closed it?" Ami asked, disbelief in people being _that_ ·irresponsible thick in her voice.

"You'd have to ask the intelligence agencies," Evan croaked as he returned to the room. "Who else benefits from a hole allowing to hack into any terminal? They used it to search for dissentients."

"For industrial espionage too," Tim added.

"Disguising," Akane voiced her opinion.

"Guinea pigs," Ami said incongruously as she tapped the keys.

" _Guinean swine_?" Akane asked, confused.

"It was his password," Ami explained, her attention on the text scrolling across the screen. "The words denote someone who is experimented upon... Oh my!" She froze staring at the screen in horror.

"What is it?" worried Tim leaned over her shoulder.

"But of cooourse," Evan rasped leaning over her other shoulder. "What else could you expect from these nice people?"

The tribals grew interested too, leaning in turn over the ghouls' shoulders. Ranma squeezed from the side, hanging with one hand on the table and one foot against the wall.

"It's atrocity," Ami mumbled as she browsed through something akin a diary.

"So he ran," Evan noted. "Had he weighed chances sensibly to decide it was safer outside the Vault? Or had he just panicked?"

"Impossible to tell," Tim replied after some delay. "Too careful a bastard, was watching his words even in his diary. I'm more interested in him mentioning 'control' Vaults. If this is not ramblings of a madman..."

"Then _most_ ·Vaults are just experiments on humans," Ami finished for him, her voice wavering. "Why...? What for...? I don't want to believe this. It's beyond evil. Just madness... Right, of course! This Overseer was just suffering from mental illness..."

"I ain't proud of bursting your bubble, Missy," Evan croaked, "But it was the whole old world that was suffering from mental illness."

"You are simply blissfully unaware of many historical facts," Tim added. "The pre-war government and corporations were such _humanitarians_ ·that I, in all honesty, am glad to live in wasteland inhabited by mutated beasts and raging bigots. It's _kinder_ ·this way."

"And his password hints without subtlety," Evan injected.

"What is the matter, will anyone tell me?" Ranma grumbled. 『This diary is practically made of hints and half-words, my English skill isn't _that_ ·good!』

『The Vault door was deliberately made not airtight,』 Ami explained. 『People were _experimented upon_ , something about radiation exposure. Like lab rats.』

『I feel sick,』 Akane complained.

"What does 'control' vault mean?" Narg asked. "Were they... controlling the experiment from it?"

"Not at all," Ami hurriedly reassured him. "It's from 'control group', meaning a group of lab rats deliberately left untouched as a sample to compare the test subjects against. Both groups are put in similar conditions to tell the effects of the experiments from all other factors... Like food or temperature, for example."

"In his words, the 8th and the 13th were control vaults," Tim noted. "I'm afraid your quest just grew complicated."

"Yeah," Narg agreed grimly. "Such people wouldn't keep the location of the clean specimen next to test subjects."

"Why?" Akane did not get it.

『In case the _test subjects_ ·figure it out,』 the redhead explained. 『And wish to share... the brunt of responsibility.』

Ami combed through the entire Overseer's holodisk, even checked its bad sectors, but she did not find anything more concrete than that one vague mention. "There should be _another_ ·grid of shelters," she said with conviction trying to console Narg. "For the experimentalists and their masters. We can... search for it."

"Where would we search for them, no one ever heard of them." Narg just grew more depressed.

"Nobody be knowing before that Vaults _be_ ·different kinds," Sulik disagreed. "We be thinking, which is which? And if masters having... Holy gekk."

No one of the girls recognized the last word, it sounded vaguely like 'gecko'.

"But then we'd have to comb through all the Vaults!" Narg cried out. "In lands who knows how far! While some may be not opened yet!"

"Sierra Army Depot," Sulik reminded him.

"There should be computers," Narg though out loud, perking up. "More serious that this one here!"

"We will gut them and find it!" Akane promised fiercely: the dirty machinations of those unknown experimentalists were causing an acute allergic reaction in her. She was itching to find evil, catch evil and punish it _good_.

"The military could have had the Vaults locations to protect them in the worst case," Ami thought out lout.

"Or not have, to avoid temptation to take them for themselves," Ranma disagred.

"In any case the military bases are our best chance," Narg said, his confidence returning. With the help of Miss Ami it increases greatly. You won't leave us hanging, won't you?"

"Saving people is our calling," Ami admitted modestly.

"Are you kidding?" Akane was indignant. "Our _serasenshi_ ·powers were given to us exactly for that!"

It was decided to wrap things up at this optimistic note. However Ami wanted to stay longer in such interesting place, she had to admit that further research was giving diminishing returns. Narg was in a hurry, urged by the hope enkindled anew. Besides, neither water nor food of this place were suitable for any of them as the ghouls had to admit with sadness. They had nothing to do here.

The ghouls were following them in a merry crowd almost stepping on their heels and stinking up the narrow corridors noticeably. Someone was dragging a torch, someone was dragging a Glowing One by their hand in the role of a light source. The concrete caverns enshrouded in darkness weren't feeling like a restless tomb anymore. More likely a merry witches' sabbath at a cemetery.

Tim fell back, then caught up with them almost at the entrance, accompanied by Evan arguing with him.

"..eally?！" Ami caught the tail of their conversation. The weapon-laden ghoul was displeased with something.

"Consider it gut sense," Tim parried. "With such a company and such heritage, how long, do you think, before they stumble into a threat to the very existence of the world? I don't believe such forces gathering together could be mere coincidence."

"All right, but why the 3000th? What they need it for?"

"To help in their epic overcoming at the critical moment, especially... Oh, Miss Ami? We recalled you complaining about your lack of a portable computer. I'm not sure if this could be a replacement at all... But please take it as a gift from all us. PipBoy 3000, Mark Six. "He handed her something akin to a massive, dull green bracer with a small screen protruding on one side among verniers and buttons. "This is the best our world can provide."

The crowd of ghouls hushed, there could be heard awed whispers ranging from 'we were hoarding such a treasure?' to 'who else if not her!'.

"I... I can't accept such gift...!" Ami tried to cocoon up in horror: she realized immediately how rare such thing was if Sulik, in his entire traveling life, only saw one working and one broken. It was an artifact worth an entire town!

"Oh come on! You've already rendered a priceless service to us. Two, if you'd be able to keep that, ahem, charged discovery a secret. Let me." He opened the clasp with a click making the bracer-shaped computer open into two halves on a hinge showing worn fabric of soft padding inside. "It is worn on your left forearm."

The crowd supported him noisily and wholeheartedly even as there were tears of envy visible.

Barely holding back her urge to fidget Ami put the PipBoy on. Designed, it seems, for an average male, it was dangilng on her dainty forearm clad in the white glove of her Super Sailor Mercury uniform. Turning it on on Tim's insistence to make sure it was working, she was too off-balance to even check what's inside, bowing repeatedly and being generally nervous. But the farewells were interrupted.

"I smell blood!" Ranma said in clipped tone when they reached the opening of the narrow tunnel to the right.

"And I gunpowder," Evan added throwing his monstrous shotgun off his shoulder in one smooth motion.

Ranma made to dash in there, but Akane caught her by the scruff of her neck: 『Get used to using one of us as a meat shield, will you,』 she berated her husband. 『Whose magical regeneration is still working, you think?』

" _Shabon spray_ " Ami said drowning the side tunnel in fog. She then explained for Evan: "You are allies, so the fog is half-transparent for you. For enemies it looks impenetrable, neither light nor sound reach further than one... than five feet. Including a torch in the hands of any of you."

"Magic?" he asked peering into the grayish murk. The darkness in that tunnel wasn't complete anymore, the fog was glowing a bit allowing to vaguely see the contours of the walls as darker shadows. "How does it tell friend from foe?"

"I was thinking of you as allies," Ami explained briefly. "It doesn't go further, there is no automatic IFF mechanism or the like."

Ranma, meanwhile, tore free to dive into the fog, indignant Akane on her heels. Ami ran after them. Usagi and the tribals followed her and Evan was limping last, falling behind.

The source of the alarm was found in the cylindrical room at the tunnel crossing. There was some bulky shadow laying unmoving, a dark shape in the luminescent fog. The bristly greenish guardsghoul from the first encounter was sitting closer, on the side shelf of the tunnel. He was busy dressing a bleeding leg wound with a dirty rag.

"It's us, and Evan with us!" Ranma reassured him when he grabbed for his shotgun.

"Have you croaked too?" the ghoul replied incongruously.

"Eeeh," the redhead mumbled, confused.

"Nobody ain't croaked," Evan rasped catching up to them. "That's all that attacked?" He pointed at the dark shadow with his gun's barrel. There was thick smell of blood coming from the unmoving carcass.

"Well, yeah," the wounded confirmed.

"Then I remove the fog," Ami said. In one brief gesture she transformed the surrealistic grayness into common darkness lit only with a torch long ahead. The fog disappeared in just a second.

"Hey, everything is all right but you got a wounded!" Ranma bellowed in the direction they came from, her hands forming a mouthpiece. Because who else? Not Evan, with his raspy voice, for sure.

"Wut? Waddat yer superpower?" the bristly one finally figured it out. "I thought I croaked from blood loss and it was how ghosts see the world..."

"Magic," Ranma explained, wise-faced.

The ghouls stampeded in jostling each other and clogging up the tunnel.

"And you told me to give the boomstick to you," the wounded barbed Mike who was limping hurriedly to administer first aid.

Gaining detail in the light of a torch brought closer, the animal carcass turned to be a bald, wrinkly mole of either red or reddish color. Its incisors were ugly, its opened maw like sharpened tongs wide enough to grasp a man around. The spear was laying broken nearby, the fragile aluminum pipe bent into a pretzel. It wasn't the reason for monster's demise, but rather the broken mess at the back of its head. Brains and other sticky chunks were decorating the ceiling and the back wall of the cylindrical room.

『Was he shooting into its mouth after it had brought him down?』 Ranma mumbled under her breath.

The wounded was soon led away, two supporting him under his arms. Doc went with them.

"Let me stand the watch or something," one of the crowding ghouls suggested picking the double-barreled shotgun up.

"You go get shells from Griz first," Evan berated him. "It's empty...! All right, everyone, com'here! Who ain't needed, shoo. Butchers bring your tools, I'll stand the watch myself while you cut it up. Sort your roles who'll be carrying provision to hang in the sun."

The overall spirits were high, along the lines of 'we'll be feasting soon!'

『Who could've thought, it's really a giant mole,』 Akane said surveying the ugly, wrinkled carcass sporting tufts of hard hairs. The blown out brains weren't making it any prettier.

『I tooold you!』 Usagi whined shuddering at the sight of incisors.

『You said it was the size of a horse,』 Ranma criticized her. 『While in reality it's barely sizes up to a wild boar. It's only a hundred kilos and a half again!』

(シーンブレイク)

Somewhere far, far away, in a black, black room a black, black man cussed trying for umpteenth time to tune up something in an relay rack. The sinusoid on the screen wasn't going to stay still, bouncing and writhing.

"Do I have I again to save your nigger ass?" someone from his back asked.

The Afro-American picking in the electronics started, the back of his head bumping against a pulled out block.

"Fuck you and your jokes! Try it yourself if you're so smart!"

"Stop being all hot and bothered over that," a third voice added from the darkness. "These were taps for Vault 12. It's a bloody miracle they survived up until now!"

(シーンブレイク)

July 24, 2016. Translated August 05, 2016.

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
She missed the descovery of Roman concrete. It totally wipes the floor with Portland Cement and is cheaper to produce to boot! And the ulcer bactery is an unremovable stain on the medical science. I was lucky to be born in the last part of 20th century, I got cured of gastritis. But how many people died in 20th century from ulcer?

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Златовласка Зеленоглазая


	5. Onward

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Kunihiku Ikuhara, Naoko Takeuchi and the creative teams of Interplay, Obsidian and Bethesda.

(シーンブレイク)

A reminder: Japanese speech is delineated using 『Japanese double quotation marks』

(シーンブレイク)

 **Chapter 5,**  
 **Onward**

(シーンブレイク)

 _Slipper Man  
(the Russian translation of the Bug Stomper perk)_

(シーンブレイク)

"Where to now?" Ranma inquired merrily when the six of them returned to the car.

"Hmm..." Narg scratched his head. "We were going to Reno... But now, maybe..."

"Think on the wheels," Sulik said seeing his partner freeze in thought.

"Yeah, right!" Narg agreed with relief as he flung the driver's side door open. "Both roads go through _Hub_ , it's about 30 miles east down the 58th. We can pick our path when we get there."

" _Habu_?" repeated Ranma. This word was somewhat...

"Yeah, like a wheel hub," Narg said. "It's a big barter city, caravan routes run in all directions like spokes." He frowned as he stared at the girls, then at the car, then at the girls again. "Now what's the best way to seat you all comfortably...?"

"Thanks, but we will go through the city on foot," Ranma refused.

"We can push if necessary," Akane elaborated further. She wasn't believing the car could squeeze through all these ruins without being stuck somewhere.

"Don't worry, we won't fall behind," Ami reassured them. "We would also cover you in case of surprises."

"What, really?" Narg had hard time believing them.

"Because superheroes," Sulik explained the obvious to him condescendingly.

Their path though the labyrinth of piled over streets was tedious and meandering. The car was bouncing and swaying on potholes, the hum of its motor becoming barely audible when it climbed over edges of brick drifts. The three sailor-suited soldiers and one girl in blue and yellow were scouting ahead, controlling the surroundings, jumping up the ruins weightlessly like a flock of grasshoppers dancing around a bulky beetle. But the dead city lay quiet, a vast mess of dead brick and concrete. Akane was ready to push, but the need never arose.

But finally a dry shallow river bed opened ahead, about five meters deep and fifty wide, its shores clad in concrete. Narg drove down a sand drift sloping gently towards the bottom. To the left there was a collapsed overpass with enough gaps to drive under, but he turned right, back towards the downtown, along previous tire tracks visible among the little tufts of wiry bushes.

"We coulda cut short across the desert." he explained, "but I prefer backtracking. Less chance to find... New adventures."

"I agree," Ranma said. "Why so slow?"

"Uh, well, you are on foot, aren't you?"

"We can run fast," Akane retorted indignantly. "For a long time." She dashed forward instantly accelerating to 60 kph, kicked sand flying.

"Oh!" Narg pushed the accelerator.

『Show-off,』 Ranma grumbled, accelerating after him. 『I had to teach her, hadn't I?』

The tribal, however, wasn't going to go over 30 or so kph. The heavy car was bouncing ponderously on uneven ground, wiry vegetation crunching.

Soon their path was blocked by yet another collapsed overpass. This one had one section collapsed conveniently forming a sort of ramp allowing to climb up the north shore, to the left of them. The final step of approximately a meter of crumbling concrete and rusty rebars was bridged over with a sloped pile of of sturdy boards, iron sheets and other junk. With the old tracks leading there, this addition could very well be a Narg and Sulik's handiwork.

Sulik stepped out to show the way and Narg, following his gestures, slowly inched the car onto the inclined section. The junk construct was crunching loudly, but held. Then there was a short drive up and similar inching over a similar junk bridge across the rift between the collapsed bridge section and the even ground. They were back in the city, on a wide boulevard rich with rusting car carcasses. And yet, there was enough space to get through. Sulik climbed back to his seat with a satisfied grunt.

『You too, get in the car,』 Akane demanded from the redhead.

『Wha...? Why me?』 the other girl said, offended. 『I can run alongside you, don't you—』

『And how much water would you have to drink afterwards?』 Akane inquired. 『Huh?』 She then asked the tribals, switching to English: "How much water do you have left?"

Sulik shook a big canteen thoughtfully. It replied with weak sloshing. "Two, three pints."

Akane winced momentarily: not this non-metric rubbish again!

"It's approximately one litre," Ami to the rescue.

『You see?』 Akane glared at Ranma. She then ordered in English: "Get in the car!"

The redhead sighed admitting defeat.

Sulik didn't have time to fling his door open as she inserted herself, dirty heels first, onto the back seat through the opening between the roof and the car side continuing to the back of the door: there were only two doors, Sulik would otherwise have to climb out and lower his seat's back to let her in.

"Thanks, no need to," she told him belatedly as she dug herself a spot by moving bags cluttering the couch. The car was not smelling like roses but Ranma didn't let that inconvenience her.

The car was very well ventilated: there were wide openings running uninterrupted from the windshield to the back supports. If there had been any intermediary struts, these had been long filed away. The amount of dust on the bags and the back seat would be much greater if it wasn't being blown away out of the rounded back window providing a clear vista of cluttered trunk.

The boulevard was going north, then turned east. Narg was maneuvering carefully between rusty remnants and collapsed buildings. Soon the former houses began becoming lower. Yards appeared, surrounded by remains of low fences. Cars were growing scarce, driving becoming easier, so he sped up to about 20 kph. The three sailor suited soldiers were running with wide steps, akin to small leaps, that may look like flat-out sprinting but was, in fact, like light jogging to them. Akane moved ahead from time to time, but there was nobody around, only rare giant rats hiding in panic from her rapid motion. The car was going silent at first, only pebbles crunching under its tires. Then a worn fan spun up under the hood, to begin incessant rattling.

"The fuel cell heated up," Narg explained.

Ami grew curious so she tried scanning it on the run, but that proved difficult: either Narg was moving the car away when steering to the right around potholes or she was getting in the way when he had to steer to the left.

"Jump onto the roof," Ranma advised as she rose up to her waist out of the car and slapped her palm against the roof.

"Won't it bend?" Ami asked with worry.

"It's Highwayman!" Narg took offense. "They built it sturdy, you can dance on it."

"Well... All right." She jumped up onto the car easily, landing almost inaudibly on three points. The Pip-Boy was dangling around her left wrist posing a distraction.

Ami concentrated on the mechanisms under the hood. She was again struck with amazement at what she saw. This was ingenious! And for this, one had to be strangled while still in university. And this one... Oh dear.

Narg was listening to her tsk's and gasps with some trepidation. Then he couldn't help any longer and asked: "What's the verdict, Doc? We won't blow up, right?"

"Huh...?" Startled, the girl genius barely avoided falling off the roof at the next pothole. "No, there is absolutely no risk of spontaneous explosion during normal operation. Although in extraordinary circumstances like flipping over or a bullet impact, the consequences could be—"

"Not unlike what a common barrel of gasoline gives, right?" Narg asked with relief.

"You can say so," Ami agreed to start running alongside the car again. "This `fuel cell` is in fact a combination of a nickel-hydrogen cells battery and an accumulator based on lithium hydride, encased in one pressure hull. The design is incredibly reliable, only approximately a half of the cells broke so far, and the hull has triple redundancy, there's a sandwich of steel and titanium layers, with layers of palladium and platinum protecting them from the hydrogen, but... There are almost three hundred kilograms of lithium hydride inside, plus hydrogen at close to 90 times the atmospheric pressure..."

"Hydrogen is, like, a gas?" Narg asked, unsure.

"Water be made of hydrogen and oxygen," Sulik injected. "As one smart man say."

"Yes, it's a flammable gas," Ami confirmed.

"And this... Haydray or howzit...?" Narg was already dreading the answer.

"Ignites at contact with air, combustion products are deadly poisonous," Ami simplified.

"We are riding a bomb," Narg sighed with overblown sadness.

"You be carry forty mi-li-metr grenades under your seat," Sulik quipped, his eyes half-lidded. "And three microfusion cells in trunk. How much tee-en-tee each?"

"Right!" Narg laughed. "Life is scary...! Heh, if I'd been afraid of cutting myself I'd never hold a spear."

"But be knowing is good," Sulik added, growing serious.

"Yeah, knowing how to handle your gear is vital," agreed his short-haired partner. "All knowledge of it we could find so far so far was rubbish like `non-serviceable`, `world's number one`, `patented` — and nothing really useful anywhere."

"Where does this fuel cell fit?" Ranma asked, curious. "Engine is in there, right...?"

"The electric motor," Ami explained, "is, in fact, quite compact. It resides near the bottom, at the beginning of the drive shaft, its efficiency over 98 percent... Hmm... Why then isn't it built directly into the rear axle...? Oh, right. This car is either a modification of a gasoline-powered car or was being produced in two variants, with possibility of quick replacement... In any case this nickel-hydrogen-metalhydride accumulator has the size and shape compatible with those of an internal combustion engine."

"Oh, I see!" Narg said. "And here I kept thinking why that second Highwayman in Klamath looked somehow wrong!"

"Second?" Ranma asked. "Are they... rare? Numerous?"

"I only saw two," Narg said. "Our one and that ruin."

"It was probably terribly expensive," Ranma thought aloud.

"Considering _how much_ platinum it contains, definitely," Ami agreed. "But... I'm more interested in finding who, and when, had added a photonium-electric accumulator to the car. The device itself is clearly factory-made, but it is also clear it is not a part of the initial design. The connection is jury-rigged... And it seems that that was the case of a fuel cell controller failure at some moment in the past. Have you replaced it recently?"

The tribals exchanged glances.

"What thingamabob is that?" Narg asked. "Cuz, you see, my technical knowledge doesn't go farther that `turn wheel, push pedal, if breaks scratch head`."

"We be remember the moss covered three handled credenza," Sulik prodded him good-naturedly.

"Yea," Narg grumbled.

"It's this thing that lets you recharge the car using microfusion cells," Ami explained pointing at the device with a wide, flat air intake sticking above the hood. She was beginning to realize the abyss of neecessity to explain things yawning ahead of her. "Considering its design features, I assume it's a piece of military technology. As we now know, a microfusion cell could provide energy in the form of either conventional electric power or pure charged photonium if a proper conduit is provided. The first mode is limited to one kilowatt, the second... I assume energy weapons utilize the photonium directly. Peak power in this mode could reach several hundred megawatts."

"Vic be screaming about impossible amperage," Sulik recalled. "Even tear his hair out."

"And this, howzit, uses photonium directly as well?" figured out Narg. "I see then. I was wondering how you could charge Highwayman in half a second!"

"Umm, I'd advice you," Ami began in a roundabout way, "to tie a long rope to that lever the next time. A _very_ long rope."

Narg and Sulik exchanged glances.

"So it _could_ blow up when we charge it?" the former asked.

"The construction seems reliable," Ami explained, sounding apologetic for some reason, "but the seals are worn, and a bad contact or a quantum stream deviation can..."

"The equivalent of forty kilograms TNT," Narg finished it for her. "Pretty clear. Any other pitfalls?"

"I don't think so," Ami reassured him. "Only the initiation of filling the accumulator poses any danger. When pressure equalizes, which happens after about 80 percent of the energy passes into the accumulator, it seals itself. This action is governed not by some sort of controller, but by laws of physics, so there is nothing to fail. Then... I think, in 20 or 30 minutes, at approximately a hundred kilowatts, the energy is passed to the fuel cell. After that process is over, the accumulator is practically empty."

The single-story suburb ended soon. The highway was going west across an almost flat plain, its two two-lane directions separated by a wide divider strip now. Picking the way became easier because now Narg could go left around obstacles, not limited to one side. Driving across sand was often smoother than down the asphalt pitted by time. The tribal first moved onto the divider strip, then onto the oncoming lanes, feeling it being easier to repeat his previous path along his own tracks. The old tracks of their Highwayman on the sandy patches were the only sign of human presence. Stiff desert vegetation was growing abundantly out of cracks in the asphalt.

"Nobody goes here, right?" Ranma asked.

"Necropolis is a dead end of sorts. People consider it empty and no one lives around, the land is too dry."

"Bad lands further east," Sulik added. "Spirits be saying not go there."

"That, too," Narg agreed. "If you follow the 15th east, you are supposed to reach the ruins of Vegas and the Colorado river. But the parts there are considered dead."

"Dead?" Ranma asked with wariness, suddenly reminded of one memorable world of Ahs. "Radiation?"

"I doubt it," Narg said. "Water-less desert, radiation — these are surprisingly surmountable. Hungry prospectors can make radroaches envious. No, there's most probably someone living there, someone with a very strong dislike for strangers and a great skill of getting rid of them. Could be remnants of Master's army. Could be deathclaws, or some yet unknown critters, or an overly unfriendly tribe. NCR keeps sending scouts from time to time to learn if the Hoover Dam is still standing, but none of them returned so far."

"Unknown creatures?" Ranma suddenly was all attention, leaning forward without noticing it.

"NCR?" Ami grew very interested, she even jumped onto the roof not to miss something.

"Deathclaws?" Akane joined as she hopped up onto the left side of the trunk.

"Weeell... Where should I begin?" Narg was taken aback, suddenly finding himself the focus of attention so intense.

"Me scout," Usagi proclaimed in a sad voice. Then she moved ahead in a burst of speed and dust, clearly trying to dodge the grief of inability to follow conversation.

"Begin from where people be living," Sulik adviced. "And how."

"Well, the place we are heading to," Narg followed his advice, "is a part of New California Republic. Several cities united, more than half a century ago, around Shady Sands lead by Tandy's father, Aradesh. Worth mentioning are Hub, _Boneyard_ , Maxson, _Junktown_ , _Dayglow_. These are parts explored and inhabited."

It seems some of these names had more meaning than just clumps of sounds, but Ranma filed that for later, currently interested in something else: "So people live in cities? But where do they get food?"

"Well... No, mostly those who does manufacturing," Narg corrected her. "Or trade. Most people live in farms, growing food. Also, cowboys herd food roaming all over the wasteland."

"You be forgetting the two ways, tribe and city," Sulik added a key fact.

"Of course, there are also tribes," Narg agreed sheepishly. "Those who either, ahem, lost their knowledge, or decided for some reason they didn't need it and returned to the primitive way. On one hand it's better because your community is like a big family, without all these conflicts between city-dwellers and rednecks, mafias, taxes and other nasty stuff." He sighed. "On the other hand, the primitive way can bite you in the ass. If, say, your secret magic bullet suddenly turns out to be a dud..."

"But tribes be closer to spirits," Sulik injected. "Hard be learning to hear them in city bustle."

"We will find a way to help your tribe," Ami promised one extra time, making herself comfortable on the trunk contents. She then delved into stydying the Pip-Boy.

Akane jumped off to continue on foot. From time to time she was running in circles around the car that was going a bit faster, about 30 kph now.

For the next fifteen or so minutes they rode in silence broken only by strained rattling of the fan under the hood and occasional jingling from bags of loot at some pothole. The road was going mind-numbingly monotonous, straight like a ruler. Even car cadavers were scarce here, further away from the city. The barely perceptible upward incline changed to a barely perceptible downward incline, rusty rails of a one-track railroad emerging at the right side.

"What about the unknown creatures and those... _desuklo_?" Ranma renewed her inquiry. "Well, where scouts disappear."

"Unknown critters..." Narg was lost in thought for a minute. "Well, it's like this. There are inhabited parts. All critters that live there are well known, their dangers, how to hunt them, and so on. But the wasteland is boundless and there is no limit to variety of things living in it. Whatever lives there is only known from third-hand fables. Where is truth, and where's fantasy? Try tell. Well, the sure sign of a new thing appearing is when caravans begin vanishing suddenly. Like that story where my great-grandmother discovered deathclaws. Because before that, they were naturally there, but they were unknown critters. Clever bastards, only attacking those who they can eat. If a caravan is strong, they'd let it pass without showing themselves. Or slaughter everyone at the night stop. But a lone wanderer - who can tell why he went missing...? But that was eighty years ago. Now everyone knows about deathclaws. But the things had spread much wider since then."

"I understand, if you go beyond known lands you can stumble on surprises," Ranma said. "But the deathclaws themselves, what are they?"

"I only saw them from far away," Narg apologized beforehand.

"We be seeing from far away too," Sulik added. "Not many seeing close and not with the spirits yet."

"Promising," Akane noted, she was running to the right of the car.

"These things are really huge," Narg continued, his eyes firmly on the road. "Especially the grizzled alphas that lead their packs. I think they have ten feet at the hump when walking on two legs like a stooped man. When on all fours, they can run very fast. Their main weapons are claws on their hands, twelve inches or so. Shred absolutely anything. Any armor is laughable against them, they open even power armor like a tin can..."

"And their hide really though," Sulik added.

"Yeah, only something large caliber can hurt them," Narg continued explaining. "Take .223, for example. It just bounces off or does no better than a pin prick."

"And such creatures hunt in packs?" Akane said, appaled. "I understood you correctly, right? Why didn't they eat all humans?"

"Well..." Narg fell silent, thinking. It was obvious this occupation was not his favorite. "I heard they mature slowly. Also, they are in fact very cautious, prefer not to deal with anything unfamiliar. While you are in the car and moving you won't even see them. We took a risk once by making a shortcut through the Tioga pass. We never saw one even briefly. But caravans can't pass there, the mouintains there are a breeding ground of deathclaws... What else... Young ones are easier to kill, the deathclaws lay eggs like birds and that's their weakness. If they have to be evicted from somewhere, people hire hunters to kill the cubs and raze nests. It's very effective. Although, no one ever tells about meeting a mother deathclaw. For pretty clear reasons, heh."

"Also, people be more," Sulik added. "Much more."

"That, too," Narg agreed. "Agriculture and industry screw hunting-gathering over like a bull bramin does a rat. The old world's history will repeat, tribes will either join into states or be stepped upon, purely by accident... These ain't my thoughts, it's what the Elder made me learn."

"How does that relate to the deathclaws?" Akane asked in puzzlement, still running alongside the car.

"Well..." Narg scratched his head taking one hand from the wheel. "Hunter-gatherer life puts an upper limit on the tribe size, right...? At about a hundred active hunters, and even that's a bit much. Now guess how much meat does a thousand-pound thing need and how much less deathclaws can feed off the same land. Prey does not appear miraculously out of thin air, it needs time to multiply and grow."

"That be a skill on its own," Sulik added. "Wise hunter know when to stop."

Akane blinked, taken aback to the point she began falling behind. Then she caught up. The redhead on the back seat shrugged with expression `d'uh, that's obvious'.

"The deathclaws are smart enough to not overhunt everything edible into the ground," Narg concluded.

"But how do they attack?" Ranma asked the most important question.

"Clever," Sulik replied. "Unexpected. Sneak from opposite sides. Lure into ambushes."

"Yeah," Narg agreed. "Going by surviving witnesses, deathclaws attack in concert. While some of them play distraction, others flank. That's where the usual rule to make camps for the night tucked behind folds of the land, away from the eyes of raiders and other undesirables, works backwards allowing the things to sneak close undetected."

The formerly ruler-straight highway unexpectedly made a small turn towards the north. The slightly wavy plain was preventing from seeing where it was going, only the faraway mountains were visible beyond certain range.

They continued for half an hour in that manner, making at some point a detour around a rain channel of epic proportions surrounding what once been a small bridge. Ranma kept pestering the tribals for basic facts about the local wildlife. They told about gecko, man-sized lizards walking on two legs, about radscorpions and dog-sized ants, about fierce `yao-guai` bears and deadly colonies of wasps called `cazadores`, about gangs of raiders, which were really tribes, being oppressed by the strengthening state and about gangs of highwaymen forming in inhabited lands from farmer youths who don't want to work. Akane was running beside them, listening. Usagi was a black silhouette far ahead. Ami wasn't hearing anything, completely engrossed in her new bracer-like computer. The rusty railroad track was still going alongside the highway, to the right of it - sometimes in parallel, sometimes going away in a smooth curve to return later.

Narg was telling about the gang-tribe of Khans, from whom his great-grandmother saved the current president of NCR, and their remnants whose asses he and Sulick kicked recently, when the highway turned back to the west. A power line emerged from the north to run in parallel to the highway. The lattice towers were standing untouched by time but all wires were gone without a trace.

"Here's the 395th," Narg said as he interrupted his tale to turn left and drive off-road: the number of rusty car remains was growing, posing a significant obstacle.

Some sort of ruins emerged ahead, to the right now. At closer inspection it turned to be a tiny, block-sized town sitting on a crossroads of the highway they have been driving down to this point and an another one going south-south-east to north-north-west. This one was straight as a ruler up to the very horizon. Narg stopped the car as he was crossing it in a hundred meters from the impassable crossroads. As a result, a funny optical illusion became apparent: to the left, in the south direction, this new highway was climbing faraway hills, still in a straight line, making it look like was going up into the sky, the line fading into a needle point.

Ranma was puzzled at first trying to figure what put her on alert. Something was subtly wrong here. Then she realized that the car remains, which she got so used to that they were practically part of the landscape, were completely absent. This highway was stretching away clear. Her interest piqued, she squeezed out through the window gap, landing after an elegant tumble.

"That way is _Dayglow_ ," Narg pointed south as he opened his door to stand up, "about a hundred miles or so. _Junktown_ is there," He wawed north. "about forty miles away. From there, the 395th goes to _Shady Sands_..."

"Which be twenty miles to the side, down another road," Sulik quiped.

"Well, the city is, but everything there is settled so densely it's all one solid State of `Shady sands', from the mountains all the way to the east," Narg excused himself. "There are so many little towns I can't really remember how any of them are called... After that, this road goes to Reno. Which, by the way, isn't NCR anymore. After that, it goes... places."

While listening to all of this, Ranma was looking around. The car remains turned out to having been just pushed to the roadside. The plants growing from cracks in the road surface were looking oppressed while some potholes bore traces of being smoothed over with sand. In other words, the road was cared for a bit, even if barely used. Also, there was an obvious dirt track for detour, going around the ruins in a flat arch to the left.

"Is the road improved?" she asked. "I mean, cleaned?"

"Yeah, they cleaned it up," Narg confirmed. "Wasted work, if you ask me. Very few go directly between _Dayglow_ and _Junktown_ , it's easier to do trade through _Boneyard_ and Hub."

Ami piped in then, translating the town names for those uninitiated, noting that "bone yard" denoted a place to pile up scrap metal and "dayglow" may be a word play on San Diego, which should be in that general direction.

Akane thanked her, repeating each town name to memorize them.

The redhead grumbled something unintelligible in confirmation as she squirmed like a worm back into the car.

Narg had already sat down and slammed his door shut when a panicked shriek echoed from the distant ruins.

The redhead slid back outside, Akane tensed and Ami started looking around nervously, finally returning to reality.

『Aren't we forgetting someone?』 Ranma said in a tone of mock confusion. 『Goth-looking, was going to scout ahead?』

At the intent inspection the ruins were burned-out husks with remains of flimsy walls interspersed with rusty, twisted remains of ribbed iron sheets. There were no intact buildings for sure. The cars, at closer look, had burned out as well - probably a century or more ago. The most intact part was a sagging traffic light arm. It was no surprise that no one was interested in this pile of rubble: there couldn't be any protection from the sun, for sure. Well, unless one hid a tent beyond these stumps of walls...?

No one had time to rush to the rescue. Accompanied with Usagi's panicked yells, a dust trail exploded out of the ruins to zig-zag to and fro rapidly across the desert. Then it headed for the car. The sailor suited Gloom became visible ahead of the billowing dust, fleeing like a frightened rabbit.

『Why, did you find an ambush?』 Ranma shouted, her hands making a mouthpiece.

『It'saraaaaaaaat‼』 Usagi shrieked like a fire alarm as she came to her senses and tried to brake. Which she did with smashing success. With her face against the sandy and rocky ground.

The tribals winced in sympathy.

『The size of a horse again?』 ranma inquired sarcastically. Then explained for the puzzled tribals: "A rat."

『Naaaw,』 Usagi retorted as she stood up and dusted herself. He face was almost unscratched, but her suit got dirty. 『This one's the size of a boar.』

『Just that big?』 Ranma asked, surprised. 『Why are you running then? As I recall, you got, howzername, entelodont—』

『It pounced!』 the blonde interrupted her with some irritation. 『Suddenly! And, just you know, I had been running from that entelodont at first like never before...! Because who is hunter and who is prey is decided by who gets a jump on whom! I just dodge very— Ack, It took chase!』

A creature emerged from the dust clouds subsiding after Usagi's dash. It was not that big, but it was stocky, most reminiscent of a bald, pink bull-terrier. At least the jaws matched.

"It's a pig-rat," Narg explained as he brought his big, silvery `desert eagle` to bear in one quick motion. "I'd rather spare a bullet, but this thing bites like a beast..."

"Let me!" Usagi suggested with such uncharacteristic, _gastronomic_ enthusiasm that Akane felt chill along her spine. Intellectually, they knew that Usagi was a hardened survivor now, after being saved from that primeval world. But it had been barely a week since. Seeing their friend in full hunter-scavenger mode still felt surreal.

"Magic?" Sulik asked.

Usagi raised a hand to her temple: "Gloom Tiara Action!"

The tiara turned into a black disk soaring a few inches above her palm, rotating, full of menace. In the blink of an eye it struck the pig-rat, reminiscent of black lighting, dust and sparks erupting from its clash against the ground. The dumb critter froze, looking seemingly unharmed, its fat body stilling.

"Holy shit!" Sulik commented.

『I wonder, is it tasty?』 the neo-Goth thought aloud as she absent-mindedly caught the returning disc to replace the tiara on her forehead. She went to the pig-rat. The animal's left and right halves slid apart with a wet sound, high pressure blood spraying the sand. The girl in black sailor fuku flipped the upper half over to poke with curiosity at the bloody mess.

Akane's eye twitched.

"She says, does it taste good," Ranma translated.

"Quite," Narg replied. "But we'd have to stop to make a fire... While Hub is just thirty miles away."

『He says it's tasty, but we got no time,』 Ranma translated in disappointed voice.

They moved on, along the highway they were following before. In light of her achievements, Usagi was sat into the trunk together with Ami. The road here was cleaned of debris and sported faint traces of potholes being filled, exactly one two-lane direction of it. Narg sped up a little.

Ranma was curious about highwaymen around here: even if this land was considered inhabited, there was only the same old boring desert as far as eye could see, covered in sparse stiff little bushes.

Narg replied that highwaymen were where caravans were, they'd have to rob desert rats here as this route was nigh untraveled. Closer to Hub, they could. But again, ranger patrols.

After about a hour, a white expanse of salt plain opened to the left. The beaten path went right, going away from the main highway along a turnoff leading to a collapsed overpass that blocked the highway. Akane commented about wastefulness of building an overpass amidst flat empty desert where a simple crossroad with traffic lights would suffice.

The road returned to the highway. The salt plain disappeared behind the folds of the deceptively flat plain. Then there was the same desert stretching on and on.

A tiny figure of a walking human emerged ahead.

The girls stared at the approaching traveler with curiosity: could it be the first average dweller of this world they'd see? Neither Narg and Sulik nor the ghouls of the 12th felt like average.

At closer inspection the pedestrian turned out to be a boy of around fifteen years dressed in a shabby straw had and baggy clothing of undyed leather. He was striding purposefully in opposite direction but stopped warily when he noticed the car.

"Yo," Narg greeted him, stopping the car. "What's up?"

"Well..." the traveler muttered sheepishly, stared upon by six strangers, four of them pretty girls. "Nothing special..."

"Did your father send you to search for a missing brahmin?" Narg probed him.

This is becoming interesting, Ranma thought as she focused on the progression of their dialogue

"I am prospector now!" the boy retorted, indignant, as he puffed his scrawny chest up.

"Aren't you a bit flimsy for a prospector?" Narg questioned him sceptically, making a point of sizing him up.

The boy looked like a scarecrow in rags: his neck was like that of a baby chick, his pants consisted mostly of patches, as well as his under shirt of indeterminable color. His unkempt foot bindings were tied up with the same leather straps that held up his soles simply tied to his feet.

The baseball bat at his belt, painfully obviously glued from two lateral halves of different color and held together with rope, was simply a cherry on top.

"I will find the Vault under Barstow!" the upstart youngster snapped back angrily. "You'll see!"

"What if you don't?" Narg continued pressing him. "What if it is occupied? Where to, then? Join a gang?"

"It can't not be there!" the boy wasn't giving up. I in the heat of discussion he forgot both the girls with their legs and the other side's numerical advantage. "Everyone knows about Vault 12 in Bakersfield, it's Maxson where the Brotherhood sits. There should be one under Barstow too! It's a sure thing! And I will find it, you'll see! You will all see!" He turned around sharply to walk away.

"Well, it's your life," Narg gave up seeing that the patient was hopeless.

"Don't do... Don't be stupid," Akane tried to help when she realized she was seeing a simple teenager on the run from his home, unskilled and knowing nothing about such lifestyle. Unfortunately, she found herself at a loss for words: in her agitation, her abysmal knowledge of English suddenly decided to play possum. "Gangs bad!"

"I do not take advices from some hooker," he snapped over his shoulder, straightening the flimsy weapon at his belt.

" _Hukeru_ ?" Akane frowned.

『I suspect that that word means...』 Ranma began. Then she halted, examined Akane and continued with caution: 『Uh, a lady of easy virtue.』

『What a jerk!』 Akane reacted pretty mildly.

"Farmer youth," Narg concluded. "The eternal source of trouble and fresh blood for the raiders."

"Shouldn't we have dissuaded him?" Ami asked with concern.

"Meh..." Narg waved his hand with expression `you can't empty a sea with a spoon'.

The following discussion about farmers and their quirks stretched for about ten minutes. Then a caravan emerged from behind another rise. One couldn't mistake this blurry, rippling spot for anything else, despite the distance: there was a pair of animals walking sedately in concert, something wide and flat visible beyond them, with yet another pair after that.

"Probably hauling some stuff for farmers from Hub," Narg explained. "We'll see when we reach them."

The animals turned out to be cows. _Two-headed_ cows. Ami even raised herself a little, one hand against the roof, to stare at yet another freak of nature. Was this world mocking her?

"Hi," Narg said to the caravaneers driving to the right roadside around them and stopping the car side to side with the head team. "What's up? Got anything to trade?"

There were two sturdy men sitting on each cart, their legs dangling off the sides. Their clothing was not much better than the boy of before had. A little less patches, undershirts a bit cleaner. They also had beards. Otherwise, the resemblance was uncanny. If one buffed that `prospector' so that his width tripled.

"Nothing that can interest ya," the relatively well dressed one replied, not even thinking to stop. Unlike the others, his hat was made of leather and his weapon was a two-barrel saw-off. They were all armed, but others all had very beaten-looking shotguns.

The carts were wide, flat boxes of sturdy, rough cut boards on car wheels, one axle per cart. Despite the tires being bald, torn and lumpy, they provided smooth riding never the less. Especially at such sedated speed.

"What sort of animals are these?" Ranma asked eying with curiosity the horned beasts of burden, the caravaners and their carts. The cargo was in bags and bundles.

"Why, but brahmins, of course," Narg said, surprised. She thought back and realized that he had really mentioned those `brahmins'. He just forgot to mention they were two-headed cows. How much surprises like this one waited ahead? He was an okay guy, but it was becoming clear that thinking wasn't his forte.

"Cows?" Akane asked, uncertain.

Narg eyed them closely. "Naw, these ones are oxen."

Akane frowned in confusion, not understanding him at first. Then she remembered that English had everything upside down. Instead of saying "male cow" like normal people do, they had a separate word for that. That did not sound like "cow" at all, like these were two different species. Honestly!

But still something wasn't adding up.

『Hey, Ranma, I thought male cow should be _bulu_ ?』

『Ah, but those aren't exactly males any more,』 the redhead explained. 『Their most precious had been snipped off.』 She mimicked scissors with her two fingers. 『And guess what? English has yet another word for that.』

Akane's eye twitched.

Ami, meanwhile, had climbed off the car and was making the caravaners nervous by standing in their way and scanning the closest brahmin fervently. The left head was staring at her, the right one was dozing, ruminating with its eyes closed. Then it blinked awake to stare at her as well, its chewing motion interrupted.

The caravan drivers weren't happy of being stopped due to such unhealthy attention to one of their means of transportation.

『Enough,』 Akane noticed this. 『Let them go, you are scaring them.』

She was starting to worry that her friend could be tested for resistance to buckshot: the caravan guys were holding at their shotguns all too nervously.

『Hey, wake up.』 Ranma leaned out of the car on the left to poke the girl genius in her side forcefully.

『Huh? Wha...?』 She started, looking around with her eyes wild. Meeting the glares of the caravan drivers she grew shepish: "I'm ssorry!" She stepped off their way, bowing.

"Hey, we are just passing by." Narg was quick to make placating gestures to defuse the situation.

The caravan leader grumbled something unintelligibly unflattering as he snapped his whip. The brahmins started moving, accompanied with carts squeaking.

"We be thinking, they get us all wrong," Sulik commented in a sad voice.

The caravan was some distance away when one of the men swore. Akane was learning fast, so she recognized "god-damned psycho brahmin-obsessed hookers" clearly.

『What sort of outrage is this!』 She flared with indignation. 『The second time in a row!』

Judging by the gamut of emotions that flashed across Ami's face, she heard that as well.

『When people encounter something they don't understand they tent to take it for the worst of what they know.』 Ranma said philosophically. 『I think this was called `Ahriman's arrow' or something... Look. When locals encounter badass guys with badass wheels, badass guns and four unarmed, lightly dressed pretty women — what woul be the first thing to go through their heads?』

『Bugger.』 Akane grit her teeth.

『We have to think of something,』 the redhead concluded. 『Otherwise everyone we meet would keep taking us for thugs driving whores. We don't want that.』

"We have to think of something," Narg echoed in his language. "Or else everyone we meet would think that two _made men_ traffic hookers from Reno. We don't need that."

Ami laughed quietly. "They said the same thing, word-by-word," she replied Sulik's silent question.

『We just have to show everyone up front that we are superheroines, not some floozies!』 Akane declared belligerently.

『And show the whole world the full extent of our abilities, not even knowing local dispositions yet?』 The redhead shot that idea.

『Maybe we should sew ourselves clothing of rags and return to our human forms?』 Akane suggested with uncertainty as she eyed the contents of the trunk. 『Then no one would take us for whores.』

『Right, because they'd take us for penniless whores.』 Usagi shot that idea.

A long silence followed.

『It seems our decision to move in our Senshi forms was premature,』 Ami began, sounding frustrated. 『We have to do without our transformations whenever possible. Also we should try to make our transformed forms seem like separate personas.』

『But then you two will be too vulnerable to random chance,』 Ranma objected.

『Try modifying their suits by adding shorts?』 Akane suggested glancing at Usagi in her black and gray sailor suit. 『Is that even possible?』

『Let me try,』 Ami suggested. Moving a couple steps away, she turned her back to everyone. She stood there for a moment, concentrating. "Mercury Crystal Power, Make-up!" A wave of re-applied transformation washed over her.

Ranma realized with sadness that she wasn't able to see any details. There was an imperceptible wave of light, and that was all. But this brief moment contains much, much more. It seems, that's how mere mortals see the moment of transformation.

『This is... Not exactly what we need,』 Akane commented after a long pause.

『Yes,』 Ami agreed as she twisted her torso to examine her puffed medieval pageboy's shorts. These hid the shape of her body well, like an orb superimposed over her lithe figure, but they weren't even reaching mid-thigh. 『I tried making them longer, but my transformation _resists_.』

『I think that's not the problem,』 Ranma said looking at her with critical eye. 『The suit is too perfect, the body is too clean. You can't pass for a local however you change it.』

"What are you arguing about?" Narg inquired looking at the unexpected changes to Ami's costume.

"What to do to make them not being mistaken for hookers," Ranma explained, "when in... their superhero forms. No ideas yet."

"We be thinking, you need break image," Sulik suggested as he stroked the bone in his nose thoughtfully. "Add something distractig."

"Carry weapons?" Ranma expanded upon the idea immediately.

"But we don't know how to shoot," Akane reminded her, recalling that time in that world of magical wasteland when they were saddled with revolvers.

"Must know your weapon for a warrior to believe," agreed Sulik.

『Yeah, firearms would look ill fitting on us,』 Ranma repeated for Usagi's sake. 『Any experienced gunslinger would see that we carry them for decoration.』

"Swords, then?" Ami suggested. "We all trained with a... wooden sword so we at least know how to handle them."

"That should work," Narg approved. "But we'd have to search where they sell them. I think only a few of Mafia men around Reno use them. Everyone else uses either firearms, or something... skull-bashing."

"Also, those three need decent clothing." Ranma gestured at her comrades. "So that they could return from their superhero forms."

"No problem," Narg replied. "We got enough money, we hadn't even sold all loot from the Khans yet. When we get to Hub we'll sponsor you, one can buy anything there."

" _Luto_ ?" Akane asked, not understanding the word.

"Well, spoils of war," Narg explained. "It's not enough to bring the scum, like those Khans, down. You have to gather their stuff, carry it with you, then sell it with at least some profit. The last part is always troublesome."

"The automobile be helping," Sulik added. "Very."

"Oh, I see," Ranma approved. "Rob the robbers."

To avoid wasting time, they got into the car to move on. The three sailor-suited girls sat on the back seat where their bare legs would not be noticeable. They moved the stuff piled there into the trunk, putting Ranma on top to act as a weight so that nothing falls out. She was already dressed in local clothing, while Narg told them that Vault suits weren't that rare. Especially as worn as this one.

The highway kept stretching on like a ruler. To the left hand small rocky hills emerged from time to time in the distance. Straight ahead and to the right hand a jagged outline of a mountain range was beginning to emerge from the bluish haze. Ruins of small towns happened from time to time along the road. Sometimes it was some shed built clearly post-apocalypse from junk. Or a corral of rusty razor wire. Sometimes herds of grazing brahmins could be seen, all of them two-headed to Ami's outrage. Ranma noticed a pair of cowboys once, riding the same brahmins. She concluded that horses died out.

After a long climb up a very flat incline, the highway turned a bit to the right as it passed its uppermost point and went down, still straight as a ruler, buckling in vertical waves across hills. The foothills of the range ahead were now visible, a plain smoothly curving upwards to become mountains that dwindled to rocky hills to the left and stretched into distance to the right. Far ahead on this plain, a gray stroke of a settlement was prominent, sparkling with iron sheets, thin filaments of smokes growing upwards. There were little seeds of farmsteads scattered around it.

"Here's Hub." Narg sounded pleased.

They overtook yet another caravan, almost indistinguishable from the first one. Then a woman with a small cart on bare-rim bicycle wheels. She glanced at the car with suspicion, her hand going to straighten the belt of her carbine.

"Hats!" Ranma shouted suddenly as she watched the pedestrian-drawn cart disappear in the distance. 『I need one to keep suntan off my face, you should try and see if it works with your sailor suits.』

"Hats are s a fine idea, to think of it," Narg approved. "We two don't wear them, we just ain't used to, but the city dwellers..."

『Also, you three have to invent proper superhero names,』 Ranma added. 『Better do it now while we haven't hit the town yet.』

『What for?』 Akane retorted with hot righteousness. 『I was Sailor Iris, I am, and I'll—』

『To not hold onto our old lives?』 Usagi interrupted her. 『Feels like the right thing to do. Dibs on _Grievous_.』

『Eeeh.』 Akane was taken aback.

"Chill Mist," Ami said In English. "Glad to meet you."

『Eeeh...』 Akane sounded rather lost.

『And you will be _Rainbow Dash_ ,』 Ranma proclaimed categorically.

『Eeeeeeh...?！』

(シーンブレイク)

January 27, 2017. Translated February 16, 2017.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Araviel  
— Paganell 8-


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